"TIMOTHY, MY DEARLY BELOVED SON"
“TIMOTHY, MY DEARLY BELOVED SON.”
Father’s Day Sunday, June 21, 2015, the Year of Our Lord
Pastor Carolyn Sissom, the Preacher
I salute the Fathers of this church, my earthly father, my children’s father, my grandchildren’s father, and the Fathers of the faith who continue faithfully preaching the Word of God, exhorting with all longsuffering and doctrine. I give glory to Father God whose grace toward me has kept me in His love and keeps His Church.
I have chosen for our Father’s Day message the beautiful relationship of the Apostle Paul and Timothy.
While all who were begotten in the Lord were dear to the Apostle Paul, Timothy has a peculiar halo of interest encircling him. For no one does he long more fervently to come to his house or to his dungeon in Rome. When the last days---the last hours, had arrived, he vehemently desires his presence!
In his second letter, he re-iterated his plea twice for Timothy to come to see him. “Do your diligence to come shortly to me” (2 Ti. 4:9). “Do your diligence” (2 Ti. 4:21) he repeats, “to come before winter.”
Timothy’s family home was in Lystra, Lycaonia (present day Turkey). His “mother was a Jewess, and believed; but his father was a Greek, which was well reported…Paul circumcised him because of the Jews.” (Acts 16:1-3)
We don’t know if his biological father was deceased or abandoned the family to return to Greece. However, nothing more is mentioned of his father.
When Paul writes to Timothy (2 Ti. 1:5) he honors his mother, Eunice and his grandmother Lois as women of God with unfeigned faith. Grace is not hereditary, but due to the faith of these two women, Paul affirms to Timothy that this Gift of Faith is in Timothy.
This is pure faith, simple faith, genuine, no hype, no smoke screen, no pretense. Unfeigned faith is when Faith is a fact. Unfeigned faith is the unmistakable currency of heaven.
Timothy was raised in a holy household. The Word of God was taught to him diligently. He was trained up in the way he should go. Blessed is the child that is under such a household. In the absence of a Godly father, Paul exhorts him in the love of a father. Paul himself had laid hands on Timothy imparting the gift of God. He exhorts him to not be afraid, or ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, or of Paul in prison.
The Holy Word of God does not indicate that Timothy had some memorable crisis when, by the power of God’s grace and Spirit, he had a sudden and instantaneous conversion.
As with many who are raised and nurtured in Godly homes under the care of loving parents, there is a process of gradual development towards maturity. “First the blade, then the ear, after that, the full corn in the ear.” From infancy and youth to manhood and age, so is it in the spiritual life. His Christian journey had distilled like the dew of heaven. The Jewish temple of old was built without “hammer, or axe, or tool of iron” being heard. So had the young altar of Timothy’s faith risen in silence.
The soil of his heart had been prepared by godly parental training. The seed sown had been gradually fostered and matured by holy hands.
Paul’s first meeting with this family would have been when he was passing through Lystra proclaiming the Gospel. There he healed the “certain man impotent in his feet from his mother’s womb”. Paul ordained elders in Lystra. He was further stoned, drug outside the city walls and left there mangled and bleeding.
It is clear that Timothy witnessed the faith of “one ready to risk his all for the sake of the truth.” From that hour, Timothy claimed a new home, a new father, a new name: “Timothy, my own son in the faith.”
The blood of the martyrs became the seed of the first Church. In the 21st Century, the blood of martyrs are again being spilled.
After the stoning, Paul and Barnabas departed from Lystra to Derbe. Paul returned to Lystra after two years to the old scene of his insult and danger.
He found a living stone, which had been polishing during his absence, ready now to take its place in the Spiritual Temple. The seed sown by pious parents, watered by his blood and tears, was now in ripe fruit, gathered by the sickle, which in turn would yield fresh seed to be scattered elsewhere, and give birth to vaster harvests.
Fathers and Mothers, all the Godly seed sown into your children, you can trust God for the time of spiritual awakening. They may appear to be slumbering, like Elijah, under their juniper-tree, but one day an Angel will rouse them with a quickening of fresh fire of divine love and blessing. They will go fearlessly on their wilderness way, with a heroic faith.
Perhaps there will be a perfect Christian laborer who will stir their noble impulses. Mere sermons are transient, but the deposits of love and Christian virtue that we make into others can never be forgotten.
Timothy might forget some passages and sentences in the two Epistles written to him by St Paul, but he would never forget that better Epistle, not written with ink. He would never forget that scene of half-completed martyrdom outside the walls of Lystra or perhaps the witnessing of Paul’s beheading in Rome.
Oh for faith and grace, not by word, but by deed, to bear witness to the power and reality of the truth, so that our children and our children’s children may take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus; and when our race is run on earth, though dead we may yet speak.
The Apostle Paul allowed seven years to elapse before his next return to Lystra. By this time Timothy was a young man possibly in his early 40’s. He was now ready, as a good soldier for his armor. His spiritual father charges him, “”This charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on you, that you by them might war a good warfare; Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck. Of whom are Hymenaeus, and Alexander; whom I have delivered to Satan, that they may learn to not blaspheme.”
Paul was not unaware of the perils of the calling and charge. “Through much tribulation they must enter into the Kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Is Paul speaking only of the tribulation of the infant church which was breaking away from the Jewish temple worship and breaking forth the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven?
No!!! The militant church is still suffering tribulation as we break through the barriers of tradition, religion, social and political persecution.
2 Tit. 3:12: “All that live Godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.”
Jesus warns us about the seed sown in stony places. These have no root and when tribulation or persecution arise, they fall away because they are offended (Mt. 13: 20-21).
From this time forward Timothy becomes the Apostle’s duteous attendant, and most beloved friend. Lystra, a town of heathen Lycaonia, has the honor of giving a faithful Evangelist to the early Church.
As God called Elijah, not from amide the consecrated tribes or cities of Israel, but among the half Gentile of rugged Gilead; so He now finds the main companion of His greatest Apostle in this distant pagan city.
Paul cares for him with parental love. “Him would Paul have to go forth with him” (Acts 16:3).
When we travel in the ministry, we need those who will not be a hindrance but will be of one mind and spirit to accomplish the mission and serve for the sake of the Gospel and not for self-promotion.
Timothy had to be warned against incurring the risk of needless privations. This is a touch of tenderness in Paul who was so careless about his own comforts. He was concerned about Timothy’s ‘frequent infirmities” and encourages him to take a little wine for his stomach’s sake.
With a father’s pride over a much loved son, he says, “You know the proof of him that as a son with the father he has served with me in the Gospel.” (Phi. 2:22).
He gives him trust to open the box at Troas which held his personal papers and parchments and bring them along with him to his dungeon; and to fetch the winter cloak.
“Son Timothy”, “My beloved Son,” “My own son in the faith,” “My work-fellow,” (Ro. 16:21) “My brother”, “I have no man like minded.”
Timothy shared not only the hardships, dangers, and opposition encountered by his illustrious spiritual father, but also participated in his triumphs.
Paul infiltrated the palace. The noble members of the church sending greetings to Timothy included Pudens and Claudia. She was the daughter of a British king.
The special center of Timothy’s ministry was not Rome, but Ephesus (a Greek city in present day Turkey). Here this young and faithful Evangelist was left to contend, almost single-handed, with the heathen influences which surrounded him. There were religious intolerances and mercenary spirits of the vast multitudes of priests, cults and craftsmen connected with the temple of Diana. There were the magicians and sorcerers. There was the hatred of the Jews. Then within the church, there was the danger of backsliding and being contaminated with surrounding worldliness of society.
“I besought you”, says Paul “to abide at Ephesus” (1 Ti. 1:13). It is easy to conclude that Timothy would understand and speak the Greek language fluently as well as Hebrew. In the year 64 A.D., Paul left Timothy at Ephesus. Paul was beheaded in 67 A.D. Timothy was the first century Christian bishop of Ephesus.
It is clear from Hebrews 13:23 that Timothy was jailed in Rome with his aged Father. Hebrews 13:23: “Know that our brother Timothy is set at liberty; with whom if he come shortly, I will see you…They of Italy salute you.” This would have been during Paul’s first imprisonment because he is expecting to be released
2 Timothy is the last known work to be written by Paul before his death. In this letter is the plea for Timothy to join him in Rome in view of his impending death.
Timothy was in Asia; but Paul earnestly urges him to come with all speed.
As any father would in writing a final letter to a son, He begins with the scenes of childhood at Lystra---then Timothy’s public consecration to the ministry---his unfaltering faithfulness---the persecutions he endured---following with solemn, searching counsels.
History/legend tells us that Timothy was stoned to death in 97A.D. when he was 80 years old. He attempted to halt a procession at a festival for the goddess Diana by the preaching of the gospel. The mob stoned him.
It is believed that he lived worthy of his godly parentage; of the prayers which had hovered over his infant cradle through the journey of destiny as the companion and “beloved son” of the Apostle Paul.
Paul’s parting words to Timothy would be a “rod and staff” of comfort as Timothy fulfilled his calling. They are a “rod and staff” to each one of us as we continue the “charge” given to us by Father God and the prophecies spoken over us.
2 Ti.4:6-18: “I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith. Hereafter there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but to all them also that love His appearing…the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me to His heavenly kingdom; to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
Carolyn Sissom, Preacher and Pastor
Eastgate Ministries Church
Scripture from K.J.V.
I entered into the labors of John Ross MacDuff (1818-1895) – Saint Paul in Rome. ( Public domain). Comments and conclusions are my own and not meant to reflect the views of Rev. MacDuff.