Welcome on back. Got another Tabernacle Tidbit for you today.
We are in 2 Timothy and Chapter 1 and Verse 2. Running into that, we have Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by God's will, for the sake of the promise of life in Christ Jesus. Who's he writing this to?
What is 2 Timothy about? It says, To Timothy, my dearly loved son, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus, our Lord. Timothy was a boy.
He grew up in kind of a split home of sorts.
His mother and his grandmother were both good Jewish women that taught him the Old Testament scriptures, that he knew the stories of the Old Testament, about King David, about Moses, about everything that God did through Israel, and that was his
family heritage on his mother's side. Scripture would also tell us that Timothy's father was a Greek, that he was not someone that followed the Lord and did not know Yahweh, the God of Israel, and did not lead Timothy in that way.
And yet, Timothy pursued after God. And he encountered Paul, and he had a great testimony with the disciples that were in his hometown of Lystra.
And if you'll remember from our series in Acts, Lystra was not a place that was particularly kind to Paul. It was along that one stretch where everywhere Paul went, he was being hurt and run out of town.
And if my memory serves me correctly, Lystra was the location where he was stoned after being dragged outside of the city, stoned and then left there for dead.
But on Paul's next missionary journey when he came around, the disciples, if you will, offered up Timothy as a protégé for Paul to say, here is a great kid and he is following the Lord. First, the book of 1 Timothy, Paul would be writing to Timothy.
Timothy would be one of the elders in the church at Ephesus, a place that Paul spent a ton of time.
And so Paul gives Timothy a lot of instructions about churches, about raising up leaders, pastors, and deacons, what even some church processes needed to be, about caring for widows and those that would serve in the church, what the process looks
like for both compensating pastors for their work, especially those that are doing the majority of the preaching and teaching, as well as what to do when pastors are misbehaving or sinning greatly and what the processes need to be there. So, that's
all in 1 Timothy. And now here in 2 Timothy, he's writing to Timothy for the very last time, and he is expressing his desire that Timothy would continue in the faith.
And he says to Timothy, My dearly loved son, I want you to think today, who has been someone that has been like a parent in your Christian faith? Someone that has taught you right and wrong in God's way. Someone that has taught you the Bible.
Have a gratitude and a love and a care for them, and let them know that you appreciate the investment that they've made in you. Maybe they've already passed on to glory, and you would just be able to thank the Lord for it.
But then I want to ask you, who are you parenting in their Christian faith? Now, for some of you, you're like, listen, you don't want me parenting any new Christians.
Maybe so, but I want you to consider that whatever God placed in you, he wants you to pass on to someone else.
So maybe this week, just find one thing that God has given you, one truth that has affected your life, affected your joy, affected your generosity, affected your love for people, and pass that on to someone else.
And then Paul closes out verse 2 by saying this, grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. That here you have this mention of these two members of the Trinity and the Spirit will be mentioned often in this book.
And he says, from God, you get grace, his unmerited favor. God gives you what you did not earn. He says, he gives mercy.
He doesn't give you what you have deserved. And then he says, he gives you peace that you would be able to have a calm on the inside when everything around you is going crazy. And that comes all from the Lord.
So who can you help in your Christian life today?
