Paul’s charge to Timothy, “Continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed,” speaks directly to those raised in the faith who may not recall a moment of dramatic conversion. The sacred writings are not merely historical, but God-breathed words able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. True belief is more than inherited knowledge; it is a living trust born of the Spirit, shaped by the example of godly people, and grounded in the sure authority of Scripture.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] It’s always interesting from a pastor’s point of view, it’s seeing the people who do feel the Lord calling them to go into mission work or to train for some sort of service in the Christian outreach that we’re all involved in. And one of the things that you can’t help but notice is the difference in background of some of the varying people. I was very aware of the fact that in church life you often have folk who are coming into involvement in the church but from such varied backgrounds, but you’re not aware of it when you’re a young person yourself like Renee and others who have been brought up in a Christian family. And I remember one youth night when they had a car rally thing at our church, this was down in Adelaide, and I was at the age of just about to turn 16,

[00:00:55] so car rallies were a great joy to be in, sitting in the back seat of this little Volkswagen and an older teenager driving crazily. I’m sure the parents might not have liked the situation, but I was having the time of my life. And a young man said to me partway through the night, he says, that’s all very well for you young people who have been brought up in the church. But some of us are so envious of you. And he was talking really about the fact of the poor start that he’d made in life as a non-Christian from a background that didn’t help him. And then he found the Lord and he had to undo a whole host of behaviours. And he told me how jealous he was of me. And I wondered what it was that I looked like or that made him say that. And the truth was that if ever there was anybody

[00:01:54] who’d been given a good start in things, I think I’d have to say I was one because my family lived in theological colleges. My dad being the principal of one, I was born into the theological, no, it was the Bible Institute in West Australia, my dad being the principal. And I came to Christ in the years in Perth from that background of being trained by my mother. The Baptists over there had these Sunday school prizes that you got and everybody doing the exams. Well, fancy having exams. I bet downstairs they’re not doing any exams. Well, they may correct me later. But that, in the olden days, used to be that the children sat for exams as to what they learned in Sunday school. And then there would be prizes given and the whole state of West Australia came together to shake some poor little kid’s hands.

[00:02:51] And that was mine twice, two years running. I was winning prizes. And I was living in a Bible Institute and with a father who was a principal and a mother, as I’ve told you on another occasion, who used to bribe me with 20 cent pieces to learn the Bible verses. And what a difference it makes. But sometimes when you’re also going to get a job, you realise just how unworldly you appear to all the others. And I remember my first day of being a teacher and the vice principal of the school had me come and help him do some chores around the school because they had been given one teacher too many and needed to wait for another person to retire for me to get a class. But he went into the men’s staff and said, we’ve got this religious bloke on the staff. And they absolutely did not know how to relate to me.

[00:03:50] And what a difference I had not having hardly any experience of the worldly side of life. And, you know, it’s interesting about the scriptures because they have the story of one such young man. His name is Timothy and the book of Timothy is written by Paul to him. And in this book, he tells something that I think we could take and apply to people like I used to be. And so the Bible reading that I want us to look at this morning is in 2 Timothy in chapter 3. If you’ll put up, I think we’ll read verses 14 to 17. Or, no, start in a minute. I’ve changed the order a bit on you. Verses 14 now. But it begins with Paul giving a statement to Timothy but he says, but as for you, you know, I’ve read this passage many times and never really understood why he started this little section by saying to Timothy, but as for you,

[00:04:56] but I do understand it now because Timothy was someone who’d been brought up to know Christ because he had two very important influencing people. One was his grandmother and her name, let’s see if I can get the names right, was Lois. And the other one was her daughter who was Eunice and Eunice was the mother of Timothy. And these two godly women had trained up little Timothy from when he was learning at their knees. and he’d become a Christian at an early age and Timothy becomes someone that Paul learns to trust and use and to send in the big task to be doing mission work. But it didn’t matter the fact that he had a background. Imagine what you were like if you were a little kid and the two people who are your family are a grandmother and a mother. I’m not criticising grandmothers and mothers

[00:06:00] but I’m just trying to paint a picture of why Paul said that but as for you, because he’s talking to people who haven’t had a great big conversion like he did, who haven’t had what it was to be walking on the other side of the street. Someone who’s always been protected. Someone who’s taught Christianity from that early age where I wouldn’t mind guessing there are some of you here today who can’t remember exactly when you came to Christ because it might have been when you were three. You know, when you’re involved in evangelism you often get people coming to you and saying I’m not sure whether they’re in the door or not and part of the reason is that they probably are in the door but it happened too early to remember exactly what got them there. And I think that Timothy was such a person but as for you he says continue

[00:06:58] in what you have learned and have firmly believed and so there is the fact that in church life you get some people like Paul who when they ask how come you are what you are the Apostle Paul he’ll tell you a grand conversion story of being on the road to Damascus and Christ calling to him from heaven and he falls to the ground I imagine he was on a horse or a camel so that was some fall I don’t know for sure he was riding or just walking but he falls to the ground and Jesus calls to him Saul, Saul why are you persecuting me talk about a dramatic conversion story to have and Paul is someone who comes across this little family and he’s been someone who’s nurtured them from that friendship point of view and knows Timothy from the those young years and when he says but as for you he’s talking to those of us like me

[00:08:02] what do you think it was like for me brought up in theological colleges all my life and having being tutored and got taken to church I went to church more often than most people ever did and this is back in the days when you were a little kid and you have to wear a suit but as a kid you’ve got short pants and a double breast little coat thing and you’re meant to keep them on all Sunday and my parents though were not really very legalistic at all but they didn’t mind me and my brother kicking the football over the garden where the grass on either side would be when we’d run around and we did lots of things that other families didn’t. They were also being so legalistic with how you had to be Baptist. I’m glad that the day of a Baptist being so strict on little rules is past. I think there’s biblical rules to keep,

[00:09:02] but I don’t know that you have to have all the little rules. Another church we went to was where everybody coming in the door would sit in the seats and you’d see them bow their heads and say the prayer. Maybe half of them didn’t. They just bowed their heads to look like they were, you know. And I learned to follow suit at keeping up the appearance from those Baptist things. And often my family got lots of criticisms because of how noisy I was or how cheeky I was or, you know, all the different things that didn’t appear to other people to be what a Christian ought to be. And I’m glad my parents were not very legalistic and so I didn’t have any bad reactions, but some of my friends did. And Timothy was someone who had come into the way of being a Christian without there being any big background story

[00:09:57] to tell except that some moment at his mother’s knee he’d pray to come to Christ without really knowing all the details about, you know, what went along with it. And Paul says, As for you, continue. And the decision that sometimes folk brought up in the church are most needed to be led to make isn’t necessarily the enormous emotional moment of coming to Jesus in the first place. Sometimes it is, Yeah, I need to continue. You may be here this morning and God has got you here because he wants to speak to you and tell you it’s time now for you to put your childhood away and continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed. I like that way of saying firmly believe because the commitment to be a Christian is not just a philosophical one where you weigh up the ideas and say, Well, I’ll go this way for now.

[00:11:05] Now, firmly believed is where there’s something much deeper in it than just your family input, than just the ideas tossed around. But it’s because there comes a moment when it’s more than an intellectual commitment. It’s more than just a decision of the personality alone. The firmly believed is because God has spoken. And when he speaks, in that conviction, the Holy Spirit brings, you believe and you believe unto your salvation. It is a faith thing of the heart that gets you in the door of being a Christian. And for many of you, because you’re perhaps a bit like I was, you don’t know exactly when you first believed. But if the Spirit of God has worked in you, then what has happened is you’ve come to know the truth about Christ and you know you believe. You may not know exactly when. You know, I had a double dose actually

[00:12:08] because my dad going off, he’s always a speaker at Easter time at conventions all around Australia and up in other countries and he’d go places. And so I’d often be tagging along and going to these conventions. And there was one where the young man that was looking after the kids is probably a typical same young man downstairs right now looking after kids and young women who are doing it. And this young fellow was wanting to get into the actions so he told us the gospel and says now I want you to decide to have Jesus and I must have been, you know, three or four or five, I don’t know what it was. And he asked us to put our hands up. He just copied what the big preachers did and in the little circle he said put your hands up and I was sitting next to my brother and my brother reported to my parents

[00:12:59] Jimmy put his hand up and I made a decision but nothing happened I was just really expressing that I’m for whatever this is but nothing happened I know because my brother told on me in the back seat of the cars we went back to our place where we’re staying, Jimmy put his hand up but it didn’t mean anything to me and I didn’t get in the door with God I already was by being a child of a Christian family, sort of already, as far as I knew, in the door, I considered myself a good Christian. But later on, when I was nine, came that moment when God did call to me, and I became a real Christian. But for many young people, it did happen at the early age, and you never can tell exactly what has gone on in the life of a child who learns at his mother’s knee or his father’s teachings.

[00:14:03] But what Paul says, he says, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed. Don’t continue in just the assumption that a human learning you’ve got in your family and they believe that you’ll go along with it. That’s not what he’s saying. And he’s saying, when you’ve come to that place of the belief, not just being the mental ascent, not just being going along with the teachings of the family, but something deeper happened and you knew that belief was strong, you firmly believed. And then he adds something about that moment. It says, knowing from whom you learned it. It makes a very big difference when you have someone that you respect and listen to and you see something of Christ in them. I want to tell you, I saw Jesus in my dad and mum.

[00:14:59] I want to tell you that I knew the reality of Christ from more than just the teachings. I knew there was something very real and this young man was very much lucky to have Lois and Eunice. I think I got the names right. Lois, the grandmother, and Eunice, his mother. And because of who it was that taught him, knowing from whom you believed it and how from childhood you’ve been acquainted with the sacred writings, some versions might read with the scriptures, but the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. And what is added by these last two lines, if you’re looking up on the screen, these last two lines, things, the scriptures are more than just a historical record or more than just an encapsulation of the belief of the times.

[00:16:05] If you go to theological college, especially for about nine-tenths of the theological colleges that are open, they tell you stuff that’s not true. They tell you that the scriptures represent the thoughts of the people back then. That is true, but it’s not the whole truth. There is such a thing as scriptures which are, as worded here, sacred writings. Actually, if you get it exactly from the original, it’s sacred letters. Not letters as in from Paul to Mary or anything like that, but letters as in the very make-up of the words. There is something about the scriptures that can be rested in because they are more than just the ideas of a generation that reflected how the church once believed or of the writer who had this reason for saying what he did. They are the sacred letters, writings.

[00:17:05] They do represent someone who had something to say, but they’re saying it because of how he’s about to tell you it happened in a moment as we get down to a later verse. It’s because of the work of the Holy Spirit behind the scriptures. We have the scriptures which have the ring of truth because they come from the God of truth whose Holy Spirit has caused them to carry the truth. That’s what the inspiration of the Bible is about. It isn’t just a human inspiration. It’s not just a general. It’s got the overall thought there somewhere, but it’s mixed in with a lot of assumptions that probably belong to the generation. That’s what you call liberal training. Liberal, not politically liberal, but liberal as if not really believing what the Bible says necessarily. It ain’t necessarily so.

[00:18:00] The things of the Bible are not so reliable. It ain’t necessarily so. Put your hand up if you know who sang that song. I want to see how much. Ah, another fellow. Or is it because I’ve mentioned it before? Well, it was Normie Rowe. Put your hand up if you can remember about Normie Rowe. Good. Yeah, I have some friends. He was an Australian pop singer, but he sang back in the 60s when gradually there came into the church these wisdoms and learnings that the theological colleges spread, which cast a shadow on the scriptures. And we were more modern types, the lecturers would say, we really, you know, we’re not so as people who’ve, you know, got this idea of the Bible. It’s true all the time. There are things to be learned about the authorship of the different people who write the Bible,

[00:18:57] but they’re not ones that take away its fact of inspiration. Oh, how do you know, Jim? I know it because I’m quoting Jesus’ attitude. Do you know that when in the New Testament, Jesus, where it’s records of him, of speaking to his generation, and at one stage he’ll say, Moses’ writings, which shows you that Jesus recognised that there was a human author, Moses, talking about these Old Testament books, Moses’ writings. But in another spot, the same verse he’ll quote and call it the Word of God. And the Bible Society, and I’ve told this many times from this pulpit, but the Bible Society put out a terrific tract about the scriptures that they’re both the Word of God and the Word of man. That’s the mystery of the scriptures that God used human vessels to write, but he superintended it with his Holy Spirit

[00:19:57] so that what they got down was what he wanted to be there. And Jesus could quote the word of God as scriptures even though he also knew there were Moses’ writings. And some of it poses the question for the people in the theological teaching business to explain how Moses’ book that he wrote has got the story of his own death. Obviously maybe there was another extra writer after he died but nonetheless they’re scriptures. And if Jesus believes it, I do too. And even though I can’t answer all the difficult questions people who are trying to be scholars try and pose as to oh how can you be so certain? Well I’m telling you this morning how I got certain. And it’s not really an intellectual way. I know I might have the training and I’ve been a teacher of theology and I’m someone who’s rehearsed in philosophy

[00:21:01] and I can brag as much as anybody. But the truth of the matter is my faith is not based. All that learning is only show me how true the scriptures are. It’s a fantastic thing when you learn more information that backs up the Bible and in fact that’s more often what you discover. When paleontologists and people who go and do history studies you can get lots of books that write the opposite direction but I want to tell you there also are those who do their studies and say what I’ve found it backs up how the Bible is. There was one very wise scholar who studied the book of Acts. It’s one of the books I’ve spent a lot of time studying as well and I had to for my thesis work. But this man wrote and said that he discovered because of all the details that different people

[00:22:02] had somehow woven into what we now have as a record of the book of Acts were proven to be historically exactly right. The names of governors or the types of language used that the conclusion becomes pressed home that the book of Acts is historically accurate. You can do the study and you’ll find plenty of people who write in the opposite direction but you’ll also, praise God, find there are people like our Australian Leon Morris who studied an awful lot in the area of New Testament but backs up the statements of Jesus that you can trust it. Well in my case it wasn’t because I knew those Leon Morris quotes to help back when I was younger but the reason why I came to the position of firmly believing I wonder whether you have a testimony like that. Was there a moment when you came to firmly believe?

[00:23:05] You know a part of my firmly believing had to do with the people that were put into my world by my living at the college. They were the students. And I had students come, one fellow who came from overseas and he so loved the gospel. He was a university student using the college as somewhere to get a room to board in. This is in Adelaide. And he’d go to the university and speak to people about Christ and then he’d bring them in tow to church. Or there was a camp they put on and it was one of those camps put on by a group that was up for overseas Christian students, O-C-F, yes. Or F, Overseas Christian Fellowship. And they used my dad as a speaker at this and so dad said yes, we’ll go and my mother was going as well. But that left my dad and mum in the Quran a bit of a problem of not wanting to leave

[00:24:13] their two sons who were now teenagers and they had rifles alone in the college. So we were commanded to go. I know about the rifles because I’ve been shot twice. So I don’t blame my parents for saying you can’t stay at home on your own. And so off we went to the thing. But that student from Africa brought so many different students to come to the camp that he’d been talking to at the Adelaide University. And all these students, their faces registered that something had really struck them. There had been that work of the Spirit and by the end of the camp so many of them came to Christ and they spoke up and said, through my brother Jason, his name was, speaking to me at university, I’ve come to know my need of Christ. Now, how did I get to firmly believe? One, because of the Billy Graham crusade

[00:25:32] where I actually did get in the door, but two, because Jason, I couldn’t disbelieve the strength of the testimony of this fellow everywhere he went in Adelaide, he went knowing, he used to be a drunkard in his country overseas, I won’t say which one, where the Christians discovered him lying in the streets out to it and they sobered him up, took him home and told him the gospel. And he became a Christian with a burden of not letting anybody not be told. So when he got a scholarship to come to Australia, he took it as like a missionary call. And the university, and he didn’t distinguish between who they were, so there were students, whoever came and sat next to him in the cafeteria, he took it as God having given him a chance. And all the professors, he didn’t care to hoots what they thought of him.

[00:26:39] I watched him talk to a big professor person as though he was just another human being. And I saw so many of them come to Christ. How do I have a faith in the Bible and the gospel? Because of these people from whom I learned it. I’m not going to tell you all my stories, but when this fellow left and went off to Ohio University, there came another student from New Zealand. He had been a total non-Christian. Now he was someone who wasn’t like brought up in a Christian home. He was someone from the other side of the world, if you like. I mean, believing-wise, he was someone, and he actually was taking a journey across somebody’s property that wasn’t his own in New Zealand, but what he didn’t know that it belonged to the New Zealand Bible Institute. and the principal used to spend some of his spare time

[00:27:37] doing some of the groundwork and he was actually out in the field somewhere the principal, digging a trench or digging a hole, I don’t know what for this bloke went to pass by and the principal called out to him engaged him in talk and won him to Christ and then because he won him to Christ he said, why don’t you come along and be a student because he saw the fellow who knew just about nothing. He saw that he was someone who would be lost having become a Christian without someone to train him more deeply. He didn’t have a childhood like I did or like other people like Timothy did and who didn’t know how the scriptures were inspired but this man taught him. He was a really strong evangelical. An evangelical is someone who believes the evangel but also believes the scriptures.

[00:28:36] And what he taught this fellow was that they were sacred writings and you could trust in the Bible. You could learn to quote it knowing it had power. And then having studied in the New Zealand Bible Institute he then wanted to go into the ministry and become a preacher so he came to our college in Adelaide. And he was busy just like Jason had been. And he was talking to people. He used to have a little minivan. And he’d go to a place to preach because he was a young man at the college and got invitations. And I’d be in the back. Another one of the students, a more grown up person, was in the front left seat. And I’d go to the church and I saw what happened when he spoke from the Bible with absolute certainty that it was the word of God. One place I saw someone fall into the aisle with tears, convicted.

[00:29:34] He said, you don’t have any problems with me not believing the Bible because the people from whom I learned it, my mum and dad, in the home they had. I had a friend at school who’d come and sit in our home. And I said, why don’t you come and sit around our house? And he said, if you had a home like mine, you’d understand. And he just loved sitting in a home where there was this peace. The peace of God because of my mum and dad were people of prayer. And the home had that sense of the presence of Christ. As for you, continue in what you’ve learned and what you firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it. In the case of Timothy, that was Lois and Eunice because Paul knew that they had seen Jesus in them, Timothy had. He didn’t need any more convincing

[00:30:38] when in the home the person of Christ is shining forth. And how from childhood you’ve been acquainted with the sacred writing. So it’s not only the people that led you there but also in the leading they’ve led you to this book, the Scriptures, that can be called Sacred Letters. Sacred Letters. In our English you could take that to be a letter from Paul to Timothy. It would be a sacred letter. But I think the meaning of the sacred writings is the fact that the very words have been overseen by God. Sure, some human author can be seen in their personality in the different styles. But God is another force behind the Scriptures. And he imprints on them a guarantee of truth. Not the truth necessarily that it’s just you know all the propositional elements and give a tick to them.

[00:31:46] It’s not just to make you someone who knows all the correct facts. That’s included but that’s not the heart of it. Watch the next bit. The sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation. Wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. And the power of the Scriptures is how they bring to you a presentation of Jesus. It is Jesus through the Scriptures. And the call that’s somehow in there. So put your trust in him that is the power of the Scriptures. Why is that happening? Because all Scripture is breathed out by God. All Scripture. Now I’ve had some people say that they were taught that that meant just the Old Testament. I want to say that if you read the word in the New Testament, Scripture, it is talking about a class of material.

[00:32:47] That it does include the Old Testament mainly in what they had but it also includes Peter recognising Paul’s writings in Scripture. Anything that’s Scripture has been breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and training in righteousness. Now there’s one more verse here we should include if you’ve got the verse 17. It follows. All right. That the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. And the idea of a man of God is actually a person of God. This is not trying to be only men and not women. But anybody who is a person of God, a woman of God or a man of God is complete, equipped for every good work which the Scriptures alone are able to make you. And so that’s the reason why we ought to have those colleges.

[00:33:55] My dad was in a Bible institute for the first half of his ministry and then he got a call to the Baptist College in South Australia which was the one that I’m referring to happening with these two people who came along and were an influence on me. But then he got called to our Baptist College up here in Brisbane and at that time we had students coming from all over Australia because it was a place then known to present the Scriptures as trustworthy, as God breathed and able to bring you to Christ and make you equipped to be a man of God. And that’s why there is a very strong need for there to be theological colleges that are conservative. You’d call that being conservative evangelical. Evangelical means you believe the evangel. The word evangel, just as another word for gospel, good news, gospel.

[00:34:54] Evangelion in Greek, evangel, if you put it in English sounds. And evangelical, as someone believes the gospel and when they have up at Tambourine Mountain sometimes those Easter conventions, people from different denominations go but they’re largely, if they go to what Tambourine Mountain represents at Easter time, they’re largely people who believe just like this passage. People who are evangelicals because they believe the use of the scriptures to lead you to the evangel, to your salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. That’s the gospel. But when you trust Jesus for your salvation, you get forgiven, you get made a son of God, you get on the path to become, being completed to be a man or woman of God. It could well be that this morning this message wasn’t one…

[00:35:52] I get sometimes surprised by how I get led to what to speak on. And I often wonder to myself, you know, I was planning something different and then suddenly this comes up. But I trust the Lord in those turns of what to preach on because the Lord often has his reasons because he knows who’s going to be present. And it could well be that this morning he’s got you here to tell you to get up and go to a proper theological college. Who knows? Or it could be that God is telling you about whys for salvation by letting the scriptures lead you to Christ. And that might be what will happen for you today. It’s actually one of the joys of being a preacher in the biblical sense of a preacher. I’m not just a teacher because there’s ideas that you can communicate. That’s a part of it. But it is because you have a message.

[00:36:56] And the message is that beautiful message about Jesus. And when you teach through the Bible, when you teach and open it up, it is actually a miracle what happens when God speaks to people. I think God doesn’t worry about a lot of our little rules because sometimes I preach with one set of ideas and God goes and tells people things. It wasn’t what I had in mind. But it’s more important that God speaks to them and he is able to use the weakest of preachers. So you don’t have to be a person who’s somehow super persuasive. It might be helpful, but the persuasion is what the Spirit does. When he takes these letters, these writings, when he takes these ideas, it’s able to make you wise for salvation. And it’s through faith in Christ Jesus. Do you have your trust in Jesus for your salvation? Have you rested it there?

[00:38:05] One way that helps you know so to rest is when you know the people from whom you learned it. And particularly when you’ve seen it in action. I used to sit in the back of that fellow’s little minivan smiling to myself at what I’d seen in the church. He got a lot of criticism for… He wasn’t… He was a New Zealander for a start. But he was… Somehow or other people would criticise him for a lot of his ways. But he actually was not someone who had the Christian flavours put on him from the early years. He was someone that had just been converted to Christ when he walked past a ditch not knowing he was on the grounds of a Bible college and the principal was the man digging the ditch and he called out to him, engaged him, led him to Christ, told him to come and be a student for a while

[00:39:03] and then sent him to our college. when you look at the people who have the power of the gospel in them then you look at the sacred writings and know you’ve found the right track. The ones that are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. May that be a story coming out of this morning. We’ll leave that with the Lord. Heavenly Father, I thank you for this beautiful passage. Especially because Lord, I realise in it that you understood people like Timothy who’d been brought up by a grandmother and a mother and he was someone that older people looked after a lot and he had been able to come and firmly believe. Lord, if there’s someone here this morning who needs a good jolt to see that they can firmly believe by trusting the scriptures and letting them speak to them. May that be the case, we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.