Welcome on back to Tabernacle Tidbits. Today, we are in 2 Timothy, Chapter 1 and Verse Number 5.
Paul is starting off the letter, saying how thankful he is for Timothy, how he wants to come and see him again. He recognizes the sadness and the tears that Timothy has.
He says this in Verse Number 5, For I am mindful of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelled in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice. And I am sure that it is in you as well. This is such a great verse, and for a couple of reasons.
Number 1, he says, I am mindful of the sincere faith within you. There are some people in this world that faith is just kind of a facade. It's a veneer for them.
The full extent of their faith is like, oh yeah, I show up for church, you know, maybe once or twice, you know, every couple of months. And you know, maybe Christmas and Easter. That's a time that I'm definitely going to be there.
But you know, other than that, you know, I just try to be a good person. And that's the extent of their faith.
You can think of many of our politicians that whatever the circumstance is, you can be sure that they're going to say, you know, God bless America.
And they're going to have some Bible verses why their particular policies are the definite will of God and why any of the, you know, 60% of the voting block of America should vote for them because they are real Christians.
And it's just not sincere faith that when you look at the lives of people that have an insincere faith, you see not the list that we find in Galatians 5 of the life of the Spirit coming out of them of love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness,
goodness, faith, meekness and temperance. But instead you find that like list of 17 things that are the works of the flesh, you find anger and vindictiveness, you find sexual immorality, you find kind of idolatry and greed and covetousness and even
things of witchcraft and all sorts of things. We want to have a sincere faith, a faith that actually, if you will, a faith that will legitimately take us to heaven, a faith that legitimately gives us a relationship with God because it is based on and
founded in and rooted in belief in Jesus Christ and repentance from our own way and turning to him as our Lord. This is the kind of sincere faith that Timothy had. It was real. It wasn't just something that he put on sometimes.
It was something that he carried with him all the time.
Paul would have been in the position to know this because he had traveled with Timothy for years on end and he had seen day in and day out, Timothy actually live out the faith that he preached to others. I love this word sincere.
This would be kind of the concept is taken from the world of pottery. And he would have sometimes pots that would be made.
You know, the clay is formed and you put it into the kiln and you might find, oh, you know, there's just like a couple different holes or spots here that I didn't quite form correctly.
And so if you had a dishonest businessman, he would put wax in those areas and then, you know, kind of paint over it so that the pot looked great.
But if you were to, you know, bake anything within that clay vessel, all of that wax would just melt away and all of the stuff inside the pot would just pour out. And so this phrase, sincere, would be actually the phrase, without wax.
And so here, Paul is saying to Timothy, like, you've got a real, genuine faith. You're not just painting over some spots, but that it's real. And I want that to be true in my life.
I want the totality of who I am to genuinely be walking with the Lord. And I pray that that is your hope as well. And then lastly, I'll mention this.
He says that this faith first dwelled in your grandmother, Lois, and your mother, Eunice.
Whether you are a parent, a grandparent, a male, a woman, a preacher or just a, you know, stay at home parent or mom or something like that, you can absolutely make a difference for eternity in how you are raising others and how you are telling
others about Jesus. Maybe you might not be one that you're, you know, preaching like Paul to hundreds over the course of years, but you might be able to pass on your faith to your spouse. You might be able to pass on your faith to your child.
And if you can do that, there's no telling what God might do in that scenario. There's no telling in who your child might one day reach. There's no way in knowing what God will do if you just continue to disciple and to pass on the faith.
Thanks for tuning in. See you for verse number six tomorrow.
