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So let us begin by prayer. Father, we commend to thy grace and fatherly mercy thy dear servant Joyce, and pray thy good hand be upon him and those who tend him, that the result may be to thy glory. Strengthen all his friends and relatives, we pray, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. So let's begin our session this morning by reading again from the first letter of Paul to Timothy, chapter four.
One Timothy, chapter four, beginning at verse one. But the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, through the hypocrisy of men that speak lies, branded in their own conscience as with a hot iron, forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats which God created to be received with thanksgiving by them that believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it be received with thanksgiving.
For it is sanctified through the word of God and through prayer. If thou put the brethren in remind of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Christ Jesus, nourished in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine which thou hast followed until now. But refuse profane and old wives' fables and exercise thyself unto godliness. Then in chapter five and verse four: But if any have a widow, if en- sorry, but if any widow have children or grandchildren, let them learn first to show piety toward their own family and to requite their parents, for this is acceptable in the sight of God.
Now she that is a widow indeed and desolate hath her hopes set on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day. In chapter six, verse eleven: But thou, O man of God, flee these things and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Lay hold on the life eternal. Verse 17, charge those that are rich in this present world that they be not high-minded, nor have their hope set on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy.
That they do good, that they be rich in good works, that they be ready to distribute, willing to communicate, laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on life, which is life indeed. If we have carefully followed and noticed the many responsibilities, tasks, and duties which Paul places upon Timothy in this letter.
We can surely come to this practical conclusion, that to do the work entrusted to him, Timothy would need a great deal of training. And when I speak of training, I'm not forgetful of that other necessity without which training is very little use, and that is gift given of God. Timothy, of course, had a remarkable gift, and to the fact that he'd possessed this gift, Paul refers from time to time.
Timothy's weakness in this area was that being a diffident personality, he didn't always exploit his gift and develop it and use it to the full. Those of us who are of sensitive disposition can have fellow feeling with Timothy, and we need to be encouraged to use the God-given gift, for all of us have a gift of one kind or another, and we have it by God's own good pleasure and decision. But having the gift, we need training. And when I speak of training, I'm not so much thinking of Timothy's initial training, which he received at the knee of his dear mother and his grandmother.
And it was training in Holy Scripture. From a babe, he says, thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation. You see, in Judaism, according to the book of Deuteronomy, many times stated, it was not first and foremost the rabbi's responsibility to teach the children the scriptures. It was the parents' responsibility to teach the children the scriptures. I personally thank God for a parent who understood that. I never went to Sunday school in all my life.
What a serious lack I did suffer. But we lived too far off one. But he took his parental responsibility very seriously to teach us from infancy God's holy word. I owe a colossal debt to it. You shall teach them as you come in, as you go out, as you sit down, as you get up, said Deuteronomy to the parents. And you see the effect of it, if I may put it that way. When our Lord came to manhood and faced the dem- devil in the wilderness, and the devil attacked him, Christ answered three times over by a quotation from the book of Deuteronomy.
We may pause to ask ourselves the question, if the devil tempted us today, would we know our Deuteronomy well enough to quote it back to him? Are you listening, young men and women? Marvelous, uh, training then from his parents, from his grandmother and mother. Nor when I talk of training this morning, am I thinking of the training he received when he worked with the Apostle Paul. That was superb training. As he accompanied Paul and worked, as Paul describes it, as a son with a father, in Paul's pioneering evangelism, and in Paul's systematic teaching of the Word of God.
Timothy would never forget the way he learned how to put the truth of the gospel across, as he heard Paul, the senior missionary, do it in the school of Turradus or in the synagogue, suiting his message to the congregation, and not just coming out with old phraseology that doesn't mean a lot in modern ears, but fresh minted ways of talking naturally the gospel and suiting it to the congregation that is present, be it dear believers or whether it be hard old atheists. Marvelous training. Now, Timothy was, as Paul describes him and as the Greeks and Romans would have described him, still a young man, because among the Romans you were young until you were forty.
You see, he was probably midway somewhere between thirty s and forty s, not a youth as we would think. But now he had these tremendous responsibilities. He obviously wouldn't be able to cope with them unless he had a great deal of training. And I'm thinking in this instance of what Paul is saying to him in this chapter four and verse seven. Train yourself, Timothy. Train yourself.
The Greek word behind this is the word from which we get gymnastics, of course. Gymnazi siaton. And all of us know that if you're going to be, say, uh, a long distance runner, you have to have the ability for it, and more so if you're going to be a sprinter. No one ever tried to train me to sprint. Flat-footed duck that I am. Do you see what use you will say, beginning to train and have hopes for an Olympic medal for me? But suppose you had all the inner gift of being a runner and a sprinter. You still wouldn't get anywhere unless you trained.
You might conceivably have an expert trainer in your youthful days. I'm not talking about that either, though such things are good. I'm talking about the daily necessity for training ourselves. The girl that's going to win an Olympic medal at swimming, she's got to train herself, hasn't she? Every morning, six days a week, maybe. Gotta get out of bed, gotta get into the swimming pool, whether she enjoys it or doesn't enjoy it. That's little difference. It's not a question, I feel enthusiastic, I'm full of emotion and fire.
Be thankful if you are, but if you aren't, you have to get on with the training. All my talk to you young folks, because I'm an old age codger. If you're going to be godly in this world, you'll have to start training yourself. Train yourself to godliness. I can't wake up one of these mornings and say, hello, I feel a bit funny this morning. I wonder what's happened to me. Oh, I can see what's happened. I've become godly overnight. It's, it's not done that way.
Godliness is a matter of intention backed home by serious effort and practical exercise, that kind of training. And oh, young folks, don't rely on anybody else to do it for you, will you? If you can get somebody to help you, get them, grab them with both hands. But listen to Paul, to Timothy. Train yourself, my boy, says he. Work out a discipline for yourself. What kind of training? That will depend, of course, in part upon your gift. There are a few that God would call to train in things academic, to get a knowledge of the languages of scripture, to get some knowledge of the manuscripts that lie behind our New Testament.
It's a grievous pity that so many evangelicals, believing the Bible to be the word of God, have made themselves experts in physics and goodness knows what else, and very few of them experts in those basic things that underlie Holy Scripture. Not given to all, not given to many. There would be some, perhaps, in each generation, who out of, uh, their devotion to God and his word, would train themselves to equip themselves technically with the technicalities that lie behind scripture. But training to develop the gift that God has given us, be it for evangelism, be it for teaching the word of God, be it in our work, uh, for the poor, or whatever it be.
Starting a discipline of prayer in particular for the work. I shall be using the word discipline, again, because I'm old fashioned and it's a word I know. But I understand in modern English, discipline is often thought of by people as a kind of punishment. That is not, of course, the basic meaning of the word. Discipline is a training. It's often used in spiritual contexts, and it is used in a spiritual context here. The training, the discipline that we have to impose upon ourselves.
It is interesting to me, therefore, to find that as this chapter begins, and it's going to be about this matter of training and spiritual discipline, the Holy Spirit is the first voice that speaks. In earlier chapters, we have found, as we have considered God's attitude to various situations, that then we have listened to the Lord Jesus and seen how he interpreted and still interprets the attitude of God, and we have followed his example. But this time, it is the Holy Spirit who comes to the fore. That is very gracious of him, isn't it? We're talking about what it means to be spiritual, therefore.
Watch it, says the Holy Spirit. I'm glad it's the Holy Spirit that says it. Watch out for pseudo, false spiritual disciplines. Because one can be misled sometimes into false training. Here are some examples. In the last times, he says, men shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines taught by demons, and they are, among other things, they forbid to marry, and then they command to abstain from certain foods.
Now, often supposed spirituality has got itself all involved in these kinds of prohibitions and rigorous disciplines. Let the Holy Spirit warn you that they are false. You don't have to be a bachelor to be spiritual. You don't get a ten percent uh, uh, uh advantage if you are a bachelor, nor a spinster for that matter. Marriage is perfectly congruent, always more than that, is positively helpful. Hmm.
In this narrow phase, at least, to developing practical godliness in anybody. If you're going to be single, you'll need a gift from God to be single. It is unusual. It is, forgive the term, abnormal. Our Lord is the authority for saying that God gives some people the gift to remain single. Don't try to be single if you don't have the gift. And as for foods, listen, says the Holy Spirit, come, come, if you're going to be healthy in your spiritual discipline, first of all, do remember the Creator.
It's possible sometimes to get so spiritually minded that we forget the Creator and his good creation. We need constantly to remember the Creator, for all the creation of God is good. God instituted marriage, of course. Let no one speak disparagingly of it. That would be an insult to the Creator who, who created it. We are to embrace his good things, the good things of his, of created life. Oh, surely we are. Good food, good health.
I don't know whether I have the chairman's permission to say it. Good art, good literature, good music. It's our God, our Creator's good things. We should not despise them. We should need grace to use them. And sometimes we must be prepared to sacrifice even good things for the sake of bigger objectives, mustn't we? You'll never be asked by God to sacrifice bad things. You shouldn't be doing them anyway. Mm-hmm.
He might call on you to sacrifice good things for the sake of bigger advantages, like the salvation of the lost. Like the ministry of teaching and shepherding the people of God. So then beware, says the Holy Spirit, of false disciplines and training. Verse eight, bodily exercise, yes, it's profitable.
And Paul isn't being narrow-minded when he says it's profitable for a little. That little can be very necessary and is good and helpful. Don't spend too long with your nose in your book stuffing old stale air, uh, not allow yourself to get out into the oxygen sometimes, else you'll go, go a little bit queer in the head if you do that. Bodily exercise is profitable for a little. But godliness is profitable to all things. Having the promise of the life which now is, and that which is to come.
In spite of the sacrifices that godliness might eventually call upon us to make, godliness gets the best out of this life. Do believe that. How would you get the best out of this? Well, by being godly. Because it is in this life, of course, that we have, I nearly said, simultaneously two kinds of life to live. We have the natural life, of course, but given to us as the people of God through faith in Christ is eternal life.
Right now. And eternal life is not just a ticket that will get you entrance into heaven, and if you've paid a lot for it, the front seats. Eternal life is a life. You have to live it. You can't put it in a box and say, I have eternal life, got it stored in a bank until the Lord come. Eternal life is a life, consists in knowing God and Jesus Christ, whom God has sent, and to discipline ourselves, to spend time with God and with his dear Son.
And learn to explore and exploit the potentials here and now of eternal life. That is to fill life with its best. Do believe that. Lay whole. hold on the life that is really life, says Paul. Lay hold on eternal life. That is, don't just have it, develop it and explore it and exploit it to the full. And so Paul reminds Timothy that if he is going to engage in serious work for God, and in this kind of training that will be his day-to-day necessity, then he must learn to trust God not merely as a creator, but look at verse ten, trust God as the savior of all men, especially of them that believe.
Now, there are some who say that salvation in this verse is nothing less than that salvation that includes forgiveness of sins and justification and eternal life and an assured inheritance in heaven. Nothing less than salvation in that full sense. And maybe they're right. If you take that view, then you will be inclined to think that, um, the end of verse ten means God is the savior of all men. Uh, well, sorry, I didn't put that quite true. Uh, strictly speaking, is the savior of those that believe. And some want to translate the Greek that way.
I personally don't think it's what it means. I think here Paul is using the term salvation in a very wide sense. For instance, we are all used to the exhortation in Philippians, work out your own salvation. That doesn't mean we have to work for salvation. Salvation is a gift. But once you have got salvation, you'll need to work out its practical implications, will you not? And then there's salvation in another sense. As believers, we are given the guidance of God's holy word as to how we should live.
If we neglect that guidance, you say, yes, but I, I have eternal life, I'm going to heaven, but I, I don't feel any particular pressure now to obey too strictly what the Lord has said. Okay. But do beware. That if we disobey the Lord and go a wandering off, we cannot be saved necessarily from the consequences of doing it. He who sows to the flesh shall of the flesh reap. And Timothy says, Paul, you'll need to save yourself, and you'll need to save those that hear you by reminding them of God's healthy truth and doctrine and encouraging them to follow the Lord closely and to adhere to his word.
More to it than that, isn't there? If you said to Paul, now look here, Paul, enjoyed your preaching tonight, dear brother, but now come and sit down here on my sofa, put your legs up, man. Uh, let me talk to you. Um, could you be possibly, um, doing too much, Paul? I mean, Paul, what with all this traveling, that was a thrilling story you told us tonight of that shipwreck in the Mediterranean. Phew, hanging on to a bit of old plank and the water bubbling in your mouth, Paul, that was exciting. But, um, um, too many of that kind of thing, Paul, you see.
Uh, would be difficult. And you know you want to last out. Not wear out, man. As for this getting beaten with rods and stoned, and I don't know what you, and praying and working with your own hand to pay the expenses for your own team. It's a novel idea. Anyway, um... Could you be in too much? I mean, you don't look to me in too good a shape, Paul. No wonder some of your critics say you look very funny. You know. Hmm.
How do you endure it anyway, Paul? What do you think Paul would say? It's for this reason, he says, we strive and agonize, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the savior of all men, especially of them that believe. That was Paul's own practical inner experience. He trusted God as the one that not only saves him in the sense of forgives his sins, but the God who, in his providences, saves him.
Well, let us not go to the extremes. God wants sacrifice, you know, but not suicide. The American army doesn't send soldiers into battle so that the soldiers can lay down their lives, of course not. The American government wants its soldiers to keep their lives as long as they possibly can, yes? But the soldier mustn't complain if one night he gets wet feet and his socks get wet, and his mummy said he should never, uh, uh, uh, let his socks gets wet because he could catch a cold. God wants tough servants.
He wants sacrifice, not suicide. And when Paul was chained up and the old captain, Roman captain, was about to beat him, Paul didn't say, hallelujah, I've had the opportunity of another beating. That will sound well in my next missionary report meeting. No, he didn't. He, he sent his nephew to have a word in the captain's ear. This man is a Roman citizen. And if you start beating him before a trial, you will yourself be in court on a very serious charge. Paul wasn't in for getting more beatings than he had to get, but he was prepared to face it for the sake of the gospel, if need be, because he had a living, vigorous faith within that ultimately his life was in the hand of God.
And you elders who have to spend extra hours and strain, emotional strain, caring for the flock, and you're a bit over sixty and your blood pressure is not too good. You'll need likewise, and you have it surely. A deep-rooted faith, you don't wear it on your sleeve. But a faith in God, who is your savior in the physical sense. He's the savior of all men. All his holy laws are directed towards our preservation.
As I say that, I'm not unaware of the vast disaster that the tsunami has caused. Nor am I unaware of the voices that will come at me in atheistic countries. How can you believe in a God almighty and all-loving and all-wisdom lies behind this universe and its workings? People who argue like that are not necessarily being difficult on purpose. Atheists will tell me.
I sat at dinner with Professor Tiganov in Moscow, head at the time of the great psychiatric institution in Moscow, a very gracious man. When questions of salvation and God arose, he graciously smiled and said to me, but how can you possibly believe in a God of love, all-loving and all-powerful and all-wise, that allows so much human suffering. He'd seen enough of it in his institution. We who know the Good Shepherd, when we come through trial, find it hard sometimes.
We're apt to say quietly, why God? Why me? And why so long? Have compassion for those that don't know the shepherd and have suffered so much and find it difficult when you tell them that God is a God of love. God, give us the wisdom to present the love and truth of God in such way and with such compassion as the Savior showed. This we mustn't say, must we, that the people who have perished in that disaster perished because they were sinners above all sinners.
Ooh. Said our Lord, not so. Don't you dare to think that they perished because they were sinners above all sinners. I tell you straight, said Christ, except you repent too, you will all likewise perish. Oh yes, there is a God of love, so loving that in the person of his son he came to suffer for us more than any of us ever has, or all of us combined ever will. God feels pain and suffered for us.
And in all our afflictions, says the Old Testament, he is afflicted. That, by the way, let's move on. So Timothy is urged to discipline himself, not to neglect his gift, and what is more, to make progress. Ha. Now you young folks do be warned, so that in future years, when you approach ninety nine, you'll say there once came to us an old, old critter, and he advised us, and now we can see what he's talking about. It's marvelous being youth, isn't it, and to begin to discover the riches of God's word.
I hope you've already begun it. Wonderful new findings to see, and you want to tell everybody about them. Much more difficult when you're fifty plus to keep on pioneering in scripture. And the tendency when you're sixty or seventy is just to repeat the same old things, so that the congregations could almost tell you in advance what you're going to say. Instead of training a fresh pioneer attitude in scripture. Thank God for all he's taught me, but what great acreage there is yet to be explored.
And what new relevances of God's word to our modern situation are there for seeing when God shows us. Let your progress be evident to all. Somebody told me once that stars guide us by first of all moving themselves. Star that doesn't move has a habit of falling down, you know. And if the elders in the church are likened to stars in the book of the Revelation, they better keep moving. We follow those that keep moving. Not away from the truth, but further into the truth.
Yes? That your progress appear to all. And so doing, you'll save yourself in the practical, spiritual sense, and those that hear you. Oh, let those of us who teach remember it. We have to impart information as best God can help us. But merely passing on information is not the sum total. Even when you're preaching the word of God, my dear brother, and teaching it, your aim is to save your fellow believer. You're doing business for God, expounding scripture is not just theory.
The medical student that is being taught the latest of precision theory is only doing it so that he can be better at his job. You shall save those that heal. From these things, Paul now turns in chapter five to the pursuit of godliness for the Lord's people as a whole, not for his particularly gifted servants. The pursuit of godliness in family life. And so he talks about, uh, uh, Timothy's attitude to the older people in the, in the church and the younger people.
He fastens particularly upon the widows, and practically half of his exhortation now is given over to instructions as to how to teach the widows. Of course, widows were in special need in the ancient world. If they had no close relatives to support them and no public help from the government, they were in difficult plight indeed. And therefore the early Christians showed their love for the Lord and their love for his people, particularly in their care for widows, just as the Jews did and still do.
Indeed, in verse four, Paul points out that if anyone has a widow and his family or so on, oh, sorry, if any widow has children or grandchildren in their family, let these, the children, learn first to show piety towards their own family. How your translations read, I know not. Mine says to show piety. The interesting thing is that this word show piety is our word for godliness that Paul has been using all the way through Timothy. The Greek word eusebio, which means to reverence well, and the noun coming from it, good reverence.
Normally, God is understood, it's reverence for God. But now, says Paul, let them learn first to show reverence towards their own family. Godliness begins at home, you know. You don't have to go to the rainforest of Ujigamugu, wherever that is, and face poisoned arrows and cannibals in order to develop godliness. You could develop it in that more dangerous situation of home life.
And godliness that is not godliness at all is a questionable godliness. Now, I'm not unaware and, uh, of what dear Bill told us again in his video, and nothing I say is meant to undercut it. Christ will call upon us as his disciples to put him first, beyond the dearest and nearest of our relatives. And many of our fellow believers in other countries are daily called upon to do it, are they not? In the circles of Orthodox Judaism, if somebody professes faith in Jesus as Mas- the Messiah, the family are apt to have a funeral because they'll cast him out as dead, as though he never lived.
In Muslim circles, someone confessing Jesus Christ as Messiah could be poisoned by their family or beaten. How easy it has been for many of us to believe the Savior, is it not? How difficult for many others. In Christ demands we put him first. But when we put him first, one of the first things he will do is to tell us to look after our own family. Some of our Lord's most withering criticisms were directed at the Pharisees.
The law said, thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother, meaning not merely to respect them, but to support them in their old age. The Pharisees had invented all kinds of pseudo godliness, by which means you could evade that responsibility. You could profess to give your money to the temple and devote it to the temple, so you could say, I've no money left, sorry papa, but I've no money left to help you. Given to God, you know. And all the while there was a back door you could get it out, so to speak, and use it as capital for your investments.
Our Lord's criticism was withering. One of the first things he will do when we put him first is to tell us to look after our family responsibilities. If anyone doesn't look after his own, he says, especially they of his own household, he has denied the faith. It's worse than an unbeliever. For unbelievers even will show some responsibility often to their parents, particularly in their old age. I'm not unaware what a burden this could be.
There are many dear women who would love to have been a nurse on a foreign field, serve the Lord as a missionary, and found themselves stuck with an elderly parent with incipient Alzheimer's, and kept for many years frustrated. What a burden that is, isn't it? Let not the brothers forget. It's not always good to be so busy preaching to other people that they should obey scripture, that you've no time to look after your elderly parents and bear some of the burden of doing the same.
But now he talks of widows and family affairs. Let me quote you an old English hymn. I'll try to explain its, uh, antiquated, uh, language. The daily round. That's not f- referring to a bit of bread, that's talking about the daily round of duties, yes. The common task, looking after ordinary day-to-day things in the home and elsewhere, you know. The daily round, the common task should furnish all we need to ask.
What kind of things? Ah, all we need to ask for the pursuance of godliness. I want to be godly. All right. What kind of experiences are needed to train you in godliness? And this hymn is saying the daily round, the common task, should furnish all we need to ask, for it provides room to deny ourselves. Family life is, if you're going to be successful, has a lot of room for that kind of thing. Why didn't you clear up your bedroom? Oh, but I, I, I, I must go out.
Oh, oh yes, I'm so eager to my hockey or football all-rounders or whatever it is, or other things. Yes, yes, yes. And it irks me to have to clean up my own bedroom. Really so? Well, now you've got an admirable opportunity, my young sir, to learn godliness. Room to deny yourself and do your duty in the family to ease the burden on your mother and cut the backyard, the grass in the backyard for your dad if he's overworked, and do it for the Lord's sake.
The daily round, the common task should furnish all I need to ask, room to deny oneself, which is a road to lead me daily nearer God. Or caring for other folks, denying myself to do it will bring me nearer to the heart of our blessed Lord, who denied himself the glories and the luxuries of heaven, walked earth penniless, in order that he might help us.
And then Paul especially commends the elderly widows over sixty. The early church apparently had a custom. They not only supported widows in general, they had a special category of widow over sixty that were enrolled officially in the church enrollment. These were widows that now, being widows, promised to serve Christ to the end of their lives now, not to seek remarriage, but to give themselves to spiritual work of counseling and training younger women and advising the young folks and looking after people in the name of the church.
Now be careful, says Paul to Tim. Tim, you'll see, don't enroll a widow like that in the church role under sixty years of age. Why not? Well, because there could be young widows in those days, and in their immediate grief might feel a spontaneous feeling they'd like somehow to devote themselves to the Lord. They're still young, and nature has its own calls, and they might find themselves ten years down the road wanting to marry, and then having a conflict of conscience, where having vowed to to serve the Lord as widows for the rest of their lives.
What should they now do? They got an offer of marriage. And Paul is down to earth with both feet on the ground. Don't encourage people to such devotion as they have not been gifted by God to perform. Let all of us be a hundred percent devoted to God. But some will not have the ability or the God-given gift, uh, to, in this case, remain single, not seek further remarriage. It's probably God's will for them that if they can, they get married and bear children and run the house.
The term is interesting, he's talking to the wives. That is they who run the house. Yes. For that too is an area in which to express godliness. To attempt levels of devotion that are beyond our God-given gift can be a dangerous thing. And anyway, these special widows were to be enrolled only if in previous life they had given themselves to these practical tasks of hospitality, washing the saints' feet, as the phrase goes, and full of good works, and so forth and so on, practicing in their young life, younger life, those glorious virtues that so mark Christian women.
What ex- what opportunity for godliness, for a widow that is a widow indeed. And in the ancient world, that was a blank situation to be in. Her hope is on God. Note the term a hope, not just a faith, a hope. What is it to face life? A widow? And no hope, hope gone for the future, as far as this life goes. And they learn, says Paul, to have their hope set on God.
Thank God for saintly widows, godly widows, and their intercessions and work for the rest of us. And now we come to the exhortations of the last chapter. For here Paul surveys, not so much the day-to-day runnings of life, but he faces the whole of life, life as a whole. Look what he says in chapter six verse seven: For we brought nothing into the world, and it is certain that we cannot carry anything out.
So at the end of this conference, let us fall to contemplating ourselves for the moment. Can you? No, you can't, of course. I'm going to say, do you remember when you were born? You don't. I don't. Nobody consulted me as to whether I wanted to come or not. Don't know about you. I woke up to find I was here. But they tell me, and I rely upon their evidence who were present, that I came into this world naked. I brought nothing in.
One day I must leave it. And this I can be certain of. I shall take nothing out. That raises the question, doesn't it? What on earth is life about? What is all my hurrying backwards and forwards and my energy and my ambitions and everything? What is it all about? When I must go and leave everything. That's a question to be faced, isn't it?
You'll see, there were some around in Paul's day who thought that even religion, godliness, was a way of making money. The dear old King James, in its first, uh, editions, used to put it the other way round, thinking that making money is is godliness. Well, that's a nonsense, you would say. The Greek means the other way round. These people imagine that godliness is a way of making money. They've not died out yet. Some of them have a theory of seed money. You send your money in to the radio broadcast or television, and that's planting a seed, and God will bless you then.
He'll make your money increase. You'll have the biggest car in America, the most beautiful wife, and the most glorious house. Prove it. Godliness is a way of making money. That's a sheer nonsense. Ask Paul how much money he made out of it. Don't say it. Having food and clothes, says Paul, and shelter. We do need those necessary things. And we're responsible who can work to work for them to get them, and to work enough to get them for other people as well. We don't despise these things.
We're not so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good. We take our work seriously. And profit is an inbuilt into the creation, isn't it? The farmer sows one kernel, pointless if there were no profit. If he only got back what he so put in, put one kernel in, got one kernel out, but he'd soon be bankrupt. He'd starve to death. He goes in for the profit, doesn't he? What he puts one kernel in and hopes at least to get thirty percent, some sixty, and some one hundred percent profit, which is more than the banks will give you. But to what purpose, eventually?
We can take nothing out. Why are we in this world? What is its prime purpose? Let us listen to our Lord Jesus. He came into this world, and he went out of this world. What was his purpose in coming? Chapter one told us he came into this world to save sinners. His name be praised eternally, that he made that his chief objective in coming into this world.
I remind you he worked at carpentry for thirty years. Don't suppose he was a mere preacher. But his prime purpose was not his carpentry. Came into the world to save sinners. It cost him his last breath. But I bid you think... the vast, innumerable millions that he will reap from this world, from that corn of wheat there to die and fall into the ground.
Dying has brought forth much fruit. We do well to follow him. But chapter six will tell us of another thing he came to do. He came and bore before Pilate the good confession, of which Paul reminds Timothy now. I charge you in the sight of Jesus Christ, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed the good confession, that thou keep this commandment without spot until his appearing.
And what was the good confession? For this cause, said he to Pilate, was I born, and for this cause came I into the world. Notice the difference this time. That I might bear witness to the truth. That's why he came. What is truth, said Pilate? We might ask the same question. What is truth? What is the truth? What's the truth about this universe, my good sir?
Do they teach you its ultimate truth at school? Dare they? Is it just a conglomeration of mindless atoms that, without any purpose, happen to collide, and eventually, without knowing it, produced you and your brain. And one day, those very same atoms, viruses and goodness knows what, without two penny worth of sense in their head, will destroy you and what you're pleased to call your rationality. And when they've destroyed it, made mincemeat of it, they won't even know they've done it.
Is that the truth about mankind? If that's so, you are a prisoner under the torture of being a rational creature, but at the mercy of non-rational, amoral forces that have produced you without knowing you exist, and one day will destroy you and not even know they've what they've done. It's a funny thing when eminent rational minds give themselves to prove that their rational minds are the products of mindless forces, which mindless forces will one day destroy their rationality. Oh, what a triumph for rationality. It's true there's hope, there's no hope for the human race.
Oh, but the truth is that these worlds were made by the word of God. We were made by him, by Jesus Christ our Lord, and through him and for him. And each one of us is more significant, each human being more significant than the whole universe put together. Do you know the sun up in the sky? Well, I haven't got a very big brain, but my brain is more significant than the sun up in the sky, because I know the sun is there. The sun doesn't know I'm here.
It's just a lot of old gas. Don't you judge in significance and importance by size. I'm a person, and one single person is more significant than all the impersonal forces in the universe. Made in the image of God. Made for God. And when we went astray, God himself came in the person of his son to redeem us. And all one day we're going to be like him. And creation herself be delivered from her bondage to corruption.
That's the truth about this universe. The truth about you. What's the truth about a rose? Says jolly nice roses, beautiful fragrance, lovely design. Oh, ah. Is that the ultimate truth about roses? No. You know they're very rare. Our planet's the only planet in the solar system we know of that can grow roses. You know that, don't you? Hm. Who made them? Whose idea are they? They're God's idea.
Our blessed Lord was the architect, designer, and producer. He gives us all things richly to enjoy. And the truth about you... How could I possibly express it? Not only made by God, but rather than that you perish, God's own Son died for you. That's the truth. Listen to our Lord before Pilate.
The Jews had eventually told Pilate, he said he's a son of God, we demand his death for blasphemy. And Pilate, being a pagan, was aware of the old red legends that now and again there this earth could be visited by godlike men, and he was afraid, says John. He took Christ inside again and said, tell me, tell me, where are you from? Our Lord didn't answer him. Look here, said Pilate, young man, you better start talking. Don't you know I have the power to crucify you? The power to release you?
You better talk. Why didn't the Lord tell him there and then where he came from? Lord, I say, excuse me, but this Pilate deserves being given a lesson. Put your glory on. Let your deity shine forth. But had he done so, it would have sizzled Pilate to an ember, and so addled his brains he couldn't even think, let alone make a decision.
Our Lord didn't explain where he came from. He said, but Pilate, you talk of your power. You would have no power against me at all, except it were given you from above. And he stood there. God incarnate. In front of a creature of his. Allowing his creature to use his free will and authority to judge his creator unknowingly and sentence him to the cross. Do you believe that? Do you believe that that was really God, the creator of the universe, in the person of his son, standing before Pilate, his creature, and putting himself into his hands, and allowing the creature to crucify him.
Believe it? Is it true? Is that the truth about God? Yes, if you want to know what God is like, look at that. His son standing before Pilate, allowing himself to be crucified for you. That's the truth. For the ultimate truth about this university, uh, universe is a person, and that person is God. And you know the truth, don't you?
Oh, thank God he's opened our eyes to see the truth, and while we were still enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son. This is the truth. Oh, we come into this world, yes, we need food and clothes. But this is the big reason that we, like our blessed Lord, in our little way, in the time that's given us, shall witness the good confession and witness to God's truth. Because one day, God, the only blessed and only potentate, who is invisible, is going to put on a show throughout the universe, the likes of which has never been seen before.
The blessed and only potentate shall stage the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will then come in all the glory of his Father and of the holy angels. And when he comes, how glorious it will be. How wonderful to be able to stand beside him and say to the fellow standing next, and you know what? By his grace, when I was on earth, I gave all I had to witness to him who died at Calvary as being God incarnate, come to witness to the truth, to save sinners, and to save me.
It'll be a disappointment if I have to say, well, now it's happened, I wish I had told more people about it and lived in the good of it while I had the chance. God bless his word to our hearts for his name's sake.
