A Word in Season: Holding Fast (2 Timothy 1:13)

The Apostle Paul exhorted his son in the faith, Timothy, to hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus, that good thing which was committed to you, keep by the

Holy Spirit who dwells in us. Paul is calling Timothy there in 2

Timothy chapter 1 and verses 13 and 14 into the same work that he has been doing in the same spirit in which he has been doing it.

Timothy is to hold fast to something. It's the language of esteeming something precious so that you will not let it go.

If my wife were walking down the street and some blaggard tried to grab the handbag that she was carrying, amongst my responses

I might call out, hold fast, hang on to that thing. It is too precious to let go.

Someone's trying to take it from you. Do not let them. Keep your grip upon that precious thing.

And that's what Paul wants Timothy to do with regard to the pattern of sound words which

Timothy had heard from Paul. You see, Paul understood that doctrine was not some dry exercise, that the teaching of God's word is not something that belongs to a few brainiacs.

The system, the form, the pattern, the holding together coherently and comprehensively of God's revelation is something that Timothy is to delight in, something that he is to esteem, something that he is to value as precious.

And there will be many who would be quite content to rip it out of his grasp, to persuade him to let it go, by any means possible to abandon that form, that pattern of sound words.

And Paul says to Timothy, Timothy, I've taught you that divine deposit of truth.

You've heard it from me. I myself have seen and known and delighted in that great span of divine revelation.

I have traced out the works of God as they are revealed in time through the prophets.

I have considered the histories and the wisdom of God made known in the scriptures.

We ourselves might say that to that we would add the New Testament revelation of God, which

Paul himself has written, so that we too may have this pattern of sound words.

Paul understands what God has said concerning himself, concerning mankind, concerning salvation, concerning his kingdom, concerning the glory which is to come.

Paul appreciates that the word of God is not some random collection of religious thoughts or spiritual notions, that God, this great and glorious intelligence, controls that revelation in its entirety, so that the whole holds together.

And holding together in that way, Timothy is to get hold and to hold fast.

He cannot hold forth the truth as it is in Jesus until he's holding it fast first of all.

He needs to do that through that faith and that love which are in Christ Jesus, that spirit raw appetite for and trust in and delight in the word of the living

God as it makes known the salvation of the Lord. And as it was for Timothy, so it must be for me and for you.

For pastors and for preachers, here is a particular duty we might say.

They above all need to hold fast to the truth. They need to hold fast to this system.

They need to dive into its depths. They need to study out its contours. They need to trace out its paths.

They cannot preach and teach to others until they themselves have grasped in some measure at least how the whole holds together.

And when that deposit is declared to us, we ourselves are to take it in and to take it on.

It is to be as precious to us as it is to them. We are to delight in it ourselves.

So as we go to worship God, as our preachers and teachers pass on this deposit to which they are holding fast in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus, let us endeavor by all means in dependence upon God to take those things to our own souls, to delight in the truth of God, to understand more and more this pattern of sound words that we may hold fast to it, to the glory of God and for the good of our own and other souls.