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By What Name Will You be Called?
A sermon by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, June 5, 2005: High School Graduate Sunday
I draw your attention please to the second letter that Paul
wrote to Timothy. Timothy was a strategic person in the life of the early
church. Somewhat in the shadows because he was always with the apostle Paul,
but you might be interested to know that in addition to the two letters that
were addressed to him and bear his name, there are six others of Paul’s letters,
Second Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, three more, they slip my mind, that
begin, “Paul and Timothy send you greetings.” Some of the last words that the
Apostle Paul will ever write to Timothy are these that I begin reading, as I
begin reading in verse 5:
“I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which you
first lived which first lived in your grandmother Lois, your mother Eunice. And
I am persuaded now lives in you also. For this reason, I remind you to fan into
flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For
God did not give us the spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power and of love
and of self-discipline.”
Let me give you the words of that last verse, verse 7, as I
memorized it – first heard it by the way from a Psychology Professor who didn’t
know much about the Bible but he was the greatest teacher I ever had in all of
my schooling.
And he said once in class, “I want to tell you all of my
studies have led up to, the summary of it all in a little verse in the Bible
which says, ‘God did not give us the spirit of fear but of love and of power and
of a sound mind.’” This is the word of the Lord.
Do you think we ought to take the boy? The grandmother
said, “Of course.” Grandmothers always say that when it comes to grandchildren,
“Of course.”
Eunice said, “You know this man Paul is an outstanding
Bible scholar but he gets so involved and sometimes he speaks so long. I don’t
know whether you, you take a boy to hear that. And Lois said (that is the
grandmother), “Well, of course you do. He is brighter than any of the other
grandchildren. He is on the top! And not only that, he is a good listener.
And if he goes to sleep, no big deal.” Timothy must have gone. We don’t know
what happened – it is not given to us. We do know this happened – that the boy,
Timothy, became a Christian on that first missionary visit that Paul made to the
church at Lystra, and his first missionary adventure, Lystra.
Go to the contemporary country of Turkey, put your finger
almost in the middle of it and you will find what was then Lystra. They called
it Galatia in that day and time. Paul had begun that first adventure into the
Gentile world, leaving the safe confines of the Holy Land, taking the gospel as
he had been called to do, to the Gentiles.
And on that night, in Lystra, that young boy Timothy heard
it. See, you don’t have to understand everything to become a Christian. You
will never understand anything, you will never understand everything when you
are a Christian. People say to me, “But he is too young. She’s too young.
They don’t understand yet.” And I say, “I have been at it all of my life and I
don’t understand all of it yet.” And the older you get, the more you know you
don’t have to understand it. But you don’t have to understand it to experience
it and that is the genius of the faith in Christ. He comes to live within us,
and He came to live within Timothy. The reason we know that is because from
that point on, Paul began to speak of Timothy as his son in the faith.
It was four or five years later, the Apostle Paul is
beginning his second missionary adventure, and he is visiting the churches that
he began when he went on the first one. Just to find out how they were doing.
And when he got to Lystra, lo and behold, this boy, this lad of a boy, who was
now about the age of our high school graduates, he had become a leader in that
church.
You say, “A teenager becoming a leader.” I say, “Sure.”
Our teenagers that we have just honored on these steps have been leading us for
some years now. Haven’t you caught on? They are a talented group. I could
take them anywhere in the world and begin a church. That Timothy should be a
leader in that church is no surprise to me. Paul was so impressed that at the
end of that visit, he said, “Timothy, come with me. Join my ministry, my
mission team.” And Timothy went.
Now the years have gone by. Paul loves that guy. They have
been together through thick and through thin. He is now, Timothy is, pastor of
the church at Ephesus. Paul is in prison in Rome. At the end of this letter,
he will ask Timothy to come, to come before winter. He needs Timothy by his
side. But he gives him a little bit of advice. He has known him through all
the years, and he knows that Timothy has a secret name. Like all of us do. Who
we are on the inside. Behind all of the makeup, behind all of the Sunday go-to
meeting clothes, behind the masks, behind our ways of expression, there is an
“us.” One that we might put almost any day as an adjective that describes who
we are.
For Timothy, there were two words and they are so typical
of us and so typical of high school graduates. One of them I think was eager
and the other one was fearful. Eager, fearful. What would yours be?
Confident, confused, trusting, doubting. Would it be anxious, asking, prayer
given, purpose oriented? What would be the inner secret word that if you were
going to write it down just for your purpose, the word that God knows about you
anyway, what would it be?
What’s your real name? For Timothy, let’s give him the two
words they are so common to all of us – eager and yet fearful. And what does
Paul say about the eager part? He says, “Let me tell you how to feed the eager
part.” Eager to get on with life, eager to get on with taking the next step.
Eager to find out what the future holds, what your place is going to be. You
never get through doing that. Never. You don’t outgrow it. You see, some of
the most effective witnesses I know for Jesus Christ are in their eighties and
nineties but they are young of heart. They are still eager and I know some
twenty-nine and thirty year olds that are old already.
Let’s talk about being eager. The apostle Paul, when he
talks about eager, talks about fire, coals, flame, talks about bringing the
coals into a flame. Picture yourself – you are camping. You are out in the
open. It is evening. The fire has been built but it is beginning to go down.
You need to put a new log on it. You need to stoke the coals. And when you do,
what happens? The wind blows. Or you are in front of your fireplace, it is dead
of winter, you have built a fire, but the fire is going down. What do you do?
You put a new log on it. And you take the little poker and you poke around and
you stoke it and the fire comes and there is such a beautiful, beautiful picture
of the spiritual life for there are times when the fire gets a little bit low.
And what is needed is to put a new log on it. Stoke it, and let the fire come,
and how does that happen? Paul says, “Stir up the fire in the gift that is
within you. Stir into flame who you are.”
Now there is one thing Paul doesn’t say here. He doesn’t
say, “You are a fearful guy. I have known you all your life, Timothy. You will
ask more questions about what we ought to do than anybody I know of.” You know,
Paul was one of these guys that just barged ahead, regardless of the
consequences, and I think Timothy was the kind of guy that asked the
consequences and then said, “Is this what we ought to do?” They were probably a
wonderful balance for each other. But Paul did not say, “Work on your fear.
Hey, Timothy, my son, I want you to take a look at that fear and put it on the
shelf.” Paul didn’t say that! What Paul said is. “Stir up the gift, the
positive side. Take that and bring it into flame.”
There is an organization that seeks to help the disabled
find employment and their motto is wonderful. It goes like this, “Fasten your
attention on your abilities, not your disabilities.” We all have abilities and
we all have disabilities. We can fasten our attention on one or the other and
Paul says to Timothy, “In your eagerness, don’t fasten your attention only on
your fear. Turn it to what God is trying to do to you.”
In another frame of reference completely, Peter Drucker, I
guess Dean of Management in America and a churchman, he has said to managers,
“Don’t try to overcome the weaknesses of your staff. Fasten your attention upon
their strengths until their weaknesses become irrelevant.” Friend, you can do
two or three things with the weaknesses that you have. I hope you know they are
there. If you know your weaknesses, you can fasten your attention on dealing
with them and you should. But if you stop there, you are going to deal only
with the negative that is you. Instead, with the eagerness, and that’s where
Paul begins, Paul begins with eagerness, “Stir up the goodness, stir up the
abilities, stir up the gifts.”
Some of you young people will be some years now as you are
discovering who you are and what you are going to do with your life. It is not
one of those things, though, like riding a bike that once you have done, you
know it forever and ever. No, what the Lord is going to do is teach you how to
do that now so you can do it the rest of your life. Eager.
The next thing he says is fear. God has not given us a
spirit of fear, but of love, and of power, and of a sound mind. Let’s look at
power.
Power is one of the apostle’s favorite words and what it
always means is that the Holy Spirit is working from the inside out. You may
look the same on the outside when the Holy Spirit is doing its work inside, but
you know good and well something is going on in there that nobody else can see
but you and God. And that is the power of the spirit at work.
Young people of all ages, when you begin to feel empty or
overcome or distraught, if you begin to feel like your life has no meaning or if
you are on a treadmill, I want to ask you a question, “How much time have you
spent with the Holy Spirit lately? How much time have you spent with God? How
much time have you spent just talking to the Lord?” Because it is in that kind
of worship experience, whether it is together or apart, that we begin to
experience the power that is within us. And don’t forget the power you have
over another person.
Howard Thurman tells the story when he, during the depths
of the depression, living out on a rural farm, the first one of his family to
ever try to get an education, had the promise that if he arrived on the campus,
they would see him through. They would see that he got an education. So he
found a trunk, put everything in it he could, but it didn’t have a handle,
didn’t have a latch, so he put a rope around it to hold it tight. And on a day,
he got somebody to take him to the train station. Bought the ticket. The man
says, “I can’t take this and check it,” looking at the trunk. He said, “The
regulations say I have got to put this on the handle. This doesn’t have a
handle.” “Well, tie it around the rope.” “I can’t do that. You will have to
ship it. Ship it by express.” “How much does that cost?” He told him and he
said, “All I’ve got’s a dollar.” He said, “I’m sorry.” He walked out and sat
on the steps of the train station. Began to cry. Cried for a while. Finally,
he opened his eyes and standing in front of him he saw two brown boots. His
eyes went upward. Big tall strong man with overalls like you wear on a farm and
a denim cap. And the man looked down at him and said, “Son, what are you crying
about?” The little boy told him. He said, “Why are you leaving?” He said, “I
want to get an education.” The man looked at him, said “If you want to get an
education, get out of this town, someone needs to help you and I am the one to
do it, follow me.” Walked up to the ticket agent, pulled out a little rawhide
purse, opened it up, pulled out the money needed, put it on the counter, the man
gave him a receipt, he handed it to the boy and he said, “Go do it.” Walked out
the door. Down the railroad tracks. Howard Thurman says he never saw him
again; never even found out his name. But he said that man had the power of my
life in his hands. And he did it. So I could do it. You never know the power
God is going to put through a person.
The most unlikely person – maybe you!
Love. Let me just say a word here about the love of God
for you. We displace this. We get so busy, or we get so worried, or we get so
fretful we forget we are loved. By the creator of the Universe. And Isaiah
sums it up so well when he says, “I know your name.” God says, “I know your
name. You are precious in my sight. I love you.” What that means is if you
are not here, if you were never born, if you are not really you, something
really important is missing across the face of the earth. God loves you and he
has a wonderful plan for your life. Grasp that love. Do you really believe God
loves the whole world and that means you?
And a sound mind can be translated discipline, self
discipline, lots of different ways to put it. Homer in THE ILIAD uses it a
whole lot. Every time he uses it, it means that something has been put into
place that makes a difference. He has given you a sound mind to put things in
place that will make a difference. I want to give you something to put in place
in your life that is so simple you don’t have to have a Bible to do it, you
don’t have to have a church to do it, you don’t have to have anything but you
and God to do it.
It comes out of a book, a book that is written by Maurice
Boyd, “A Lover’s Quarrel with the World.” And he writes of a man named Hugh
Redwood that he came across in reading history. Hugh Redwood was a layperson
back in the days when preachers were very limited and mostly laypersons did the
preaching. And he became an outstanding preacher, even though he was a
layperson. Hugh Redwood went through a tough time in his life. In the middle
of that tough, God seemed nowhere about.
One night he was building the fire. Noticed the Bible was
open over on the table, went over to look at it. It was Psalm 59 and the tenth
verse of that says, “And the God of mercy will prevent you.” Now in our day and
time, prevent means to keep something from happening, doesn’t it? But in King
James Version time, prevent meant to go before. God in his mercy will go before
you. He put the Bible down, paused, was a word he needed to hear, he picked it
up to look at it again, and over in the margin, somebody had paraphrased it, “My
God in loving kindness shall meet you at every corner.” WOW! What a discipline
if you could begin to see God meeting you at every corner of your life. And that
around every corner, God already is going before you. Young graduates, young
people of all ages, young who are eager and yet fearful, know this, God will
meet you at every corner.
Look for Him. Be open to Him and say yes.
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