It wasn’t easy. She loved her husband but it was so difficult to share a life with someone who didn’t share your faith. You would think it would only be an issue on Sundays but it was an issue every day of the week. And children only complicated the matter; her priorities for the kids were often in conflict with her husband’s.
We don’t know a lot about this woman, she is only mentioned by name in one verse in the New Testament and yet her influence is seen throughout the New Testament and the early church.
We know from the scripture that Deanne read earlier that her name was Eunice and that she was the mother of Timothy who was one the young preachers used by Paul to minister to the early church. Two of the letters that make up the New Testament were actually written by Paul to Timothy, coincidently called first and second Timothy, and he is credited with co-writing six of Paul’s other letters. So you gotta figure that Eunice did something right.
Let’s go back to a portion of what was read earlier 2 Timothy 1:5 I remember your genuine faith, for you share the faith that first filled your grandmother Lois and your mother, Eunice. And I know that same faith continues strong in you.
You catch the critical word there? The word faith, three times in thirty words Paul uses the word faith. We are told that it was a genuine faith, that it was a shared faith and that it was a strong faith. The person that Timothy was had been shaped by his mother and grand mother, and that isn’t all that surprising considering how much influence our mothers have over us. It was Napoleon who said “Let France have good mothers, and she will have good sons.” And in his poem by the same name William Ross Wallace writes “For the hand that rocks the cradle Is the hand that rules the world.”
And so according to Paul, Timothy was who Timothy was because of Eunice. His faith had been formed and shaped by the faith of his mother and on this day when we celebrate Mother’s it would be a good time to look at the faith of this particular mother.
To better understand the type of faith that Eunice had the type of faith that Eunice passed on to her son we have to go back to the book of Acts where Timothy is first introduced. Acts 16:1 Paul went first to Derbe and then to Lystra, where there was a young disciple named Timothy. His mother was a Jewish believer, but his father was a Greek.
We haven’t pulled up on of our trusty maps for awhile so this would be the day, this trip is often referred to as Paul’s Second Missionary Journey. Paul and Barnabas had previously traveled throughout Asia starting a number of churches and they have ended up back in Antioch which is in what we now know as Syria. And the decision is made to travel back to some of the cities they had previously visited to see how the believers were doing. And chapter 16 tells us that they first went to Derbe which is situated here in modern day Turkey and then they traveled on to Lystra where they had started a new church five years before. And it was while they were here that Paul had the opportunity to reconnect with the young man Timothy and recruit him as his protégé and assistant.
And none of that really had much to do with the story, but what does is the last line of that introduction where it is written Acts 16:1 Paul went first to Derbe and then to Lystra, where there was a young disciple named Timothy. His mother was a Jewish believer, but his father was a Greek.
Did you catch that? His mother was a Jewish believer, but his father was a Greek. It’s not that Paul had anything against Greeks, you see it wasn’t what Paul said about Timothy’s father it was what was left unsaid.
He was a Greek, not a Greek believer just a Greek. And so we have a household where one spouse is a Christ follower and one isn’t and the challenges that are posed in such situations can never be fully understood unless you are in that situation.
There are financial considerations, where will money get spent? The unsaved partner sees money being given to the church as a waste and you don’t even want to get started on how the believer views money spent on vices. There are social considerations. Who will their friends be and how will they spend their social time. And there are moral decisions. What should or shouldn’t be watched, listened to or read, what should they do or not do? What happens on a nice weekend is it church or the beach?
If the non-believer comes to church it’s often with a pout if they don’t come to church the believer feels out of place with all the families and couples. What was it the song said “One is the loneliest number of all.”
And that was the situation that Eunice found herself in, she probably didn’t have to fight the hockey, baseball, soccer, scouts, sparks, band battles but I’m sure there were similar cultural concerns 2000 years ago. Will Timothy be in church and youth group or will he be at the chariot races and practicing for the Olympics?
And so Eunice would have been practicing her faith and raising her son in a less then ideal home situation. Now we don’t know at what point in her relationship she became a believer. Was she a Christ follower before the wedding or after the wedding? In her situation and culture that question may have been irrelevant in that her marriage may very well have been arranged and she didn’t have a choice of who she would marry or who would marry her.
I warn Christian teens about the challenges that they will face if they marry someone who doesn’t share their faith and if you don’t believe me I can give you the names of a hundred people who have been there. And I tell them the easiest way to not marry a non-believer is to not date a non-believer. And they tell me not to worry they have everything under control. Sure.
By the way if you are in that situation, that as a believer you married someone who wasn’t you were probably warned, and you thought “Oh they’ll change and it will all work out.” I can sympathize with your situation but understand you put yourself in it. Not wanting to sound unfeeling but. . . you got what you got.
We are even warned about it in the scriptures when Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 6:14 Don’t team up with those who are unbelievers. How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness? You might recall the phrasing from the authorized version as not being unequally yoked. This doesn’t specifically have to do with marriage as much as it does relationships, such as business partnerships, but really our marriages are probably the greatest relationship in our lives and this scripture warns about the conflicts that this will bring.
I remember reading an article in our denominational magazine years ago and the woman writing was speaking about that very thing. She had gone to church and left her husband home watching sports and on her way she was grousing to God about how unfair it was. And she wrote that God asked her “how has he (meaning her husband) changed since you got married?” And that was the problem she responded he hadn’t. No that was the answer. She hadn’t exactly bought a pig in a poke.
When I counsel couples getting married I remind them if they can’t live with that person the way they are for the rest of their life they have no right to marry them expecting them to change.
Then there are those who come to a life changing relationship with God after they’ve been married, and that’s tough on both partners. And that was probably the situation here, Timothy’s father had probably married a Jew and ended up with a Christian.
When that happens as a believer you can’t understand why your spouse doesn’t change and they can’t understand why you did.
But you can’t make them believe and you will never be held accountable for their behaviour, only yours. But here is what the word of God has for you today: 1 Corinthians 7:12-14 If a Christian man has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to continue living with him, he must not leave her. And if a Christian woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to continue living with her, she must not leave him. For the Christian wife brings holiness to her marriage, and the Christian husband brings holiness to his marriage. Otherwise, your children would not be holy, but now they are holy.
So what it is saying is if you are a believer and your spouse isn’t don’t start thinking how much easier life would be if you were married to so and so who is a believer, cause you’re not. Don’t even go there, because there is never a good reason for doing the wrong thing.
But don’t give up, I know all kinds of couples where the believer was faithful in their relationship to Christ and in their marriage and their partner saw in them a faith they wanted as well. It’s just not easy and it’s not always fast, or least fast enough.
Her marriage wouldn’t have been the only place that her faith would have been challenged. Remember she wasn’t only a believer she was a Jewish believer and for many in her family and her community of faith she would have been viewed as someone who had deserted her faith.
While we see the connection and continuation of the Jewish faith into Christianity and it was pretty much viewed as a sect of Judaism by many in that culture it wasn’t always viewed that way by the Jews. And the Jews in Lystra weren’t necessarily all that sympathetic to the early church. As a matter of fact during Paul’s first visit there we read this account Acts 14:19 Then some Jews arrived from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowds to their side. They stoned Paul and dragged him out of town, thinking he was dead. You gotta hate that.
And so the community that Eunice would have grown up in would have turned their back on her, her husband wouldn’t have understood the changes that had happened in his wife and even the civil authorities would have seen her faith as a threat because as a Christian she would have refused to offer the annual sacrifice to Caesar that was required under Roman law.
And it was in this environment that she was called to raise Timothy, to provide an introduction to Jesus and to nurture his growing faith. And she did, perhaps too well because Paul saw in this young man a faith that he thought could be used to change the world.
And now she was being called to let go of her son. We don’t know how old Timothy was when Paul recruited him, but it really doesn’t matter. You never stop being your mother’s little boy. But this wouldn’t have been easy for Eunice, letting her son go to follow his calling. We’re not talking about becoming the pastor in a quiet little community that respected you and looked up to you.
Eunice would have known how many times Paul had been stoned and beaten, arrested and thrown into prison. It would have been no secret how the leaders of this baby church were being treated by hostile crowds around the known world. Listen to how Paul describes himself and his ministry: 2 Corinthians 11:23-25 . . . I have worked harder, been put in prison more often, been whipped times without number, and faced death again and again. Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea.
And now she was being called to surrender her child over to God’s service, over to certain persecution and possible death. Knowing that when he left Lystra that day that he might never return. Did she do it willing? Or was it over her objections? We’ll probably never really know but considering that the faith that she passed on to her son was said to have been a strong faith we have to believe that she trusted God to know what was best for her son. Oh and tradition tells us that Timothy was stoned to death in Ephesus when he objected to a pagan celebration in honour of the Greek goddess Diana.
Her faith required a commitment to her God, to her church and to her son.
And so it was in this less than ideal situation that Eunice’s faith flourished and provided an example for her son. An example that allowed him to minister in less then ideal circumstances and to teach and literally effect the eternity of countless people.
We have to ask ourselves, how would the early church have been affected and consequently how would the world have been affected if Eunice had not been the mother that she was?
Now you’ve realized that I have been speaking for about 20 minutes and haven’t had a single point come up on the screen and you don’t have a note taking guide in front of you to write down the various points. That’s not to say this message is entirely pointless.
I would challenge you to look at your situation today as a parent in the light of Eunice’s story. And understand that regardless of how different those situations might be that you and Eunice are serving the same God and you love your children.
And two thousand years ago Eunice probably claimed the same promise from the Old Testament as you have and that’s Proverbs 22:6 Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it.
Now keeping that in mind realize that the only responsibility in Proverbs 22:6 for the parent is the first part, Direct your children onto the right path the message of this proverb is “Do your best when they are young and hope for the best when they are old.”
And remember there are only two ages mentioned here children, and old people and nothing in between, he doesn’t say anything about adolescents or young adults, not even Solomon was game to talk about teen-agers let alone make predications.
And that was what Eunice did, she directed her son onto the right path, listen to how Paul describes Timothy’s early years 2 Timothy 3:15 You have been taught the holy Scriptures from childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus.
So is Proverbs 22:6 a guarantee? Unfortunately there are no guarantees. You see the proverbs talk about probability, if we do this, then there is a better chance of this happening. So if we direct our children onto the right path, there is a better chance of them walking on it then if we don’t direct them onto the right path. But it does not negate in any way their free will.
We can train up our children, we can walk a blameless walk, we can see that they are in church each week, we can have family devotions, and we can read them God’s word. But we cannot, cannot, cannot make the decision to follow God for them. I mean we can’t even guarantee that they will turn out nice. As much as we would like to determine their salvation, we can only show them the way and trust God to bring them into his fold.
But remember there is nobody better positioned to influence your children then you. Please don’t wait to discuss God and Jesus with your kids until they are old enough to understand it, trust me they are old enough now. If you think it’s Vashti’s responsibility in nursery, or Angela’s in Jr. Church, or Paul’s in Ignite or Jason and Sherry’s in youth you are seriously mistaken and you are gambling with your children’s eternity.
My prayer for you today is that someday someone will tell your child I remember your genuine faith, for you share the faith that first filled your parents. And I know that same faith continues strong in you.
PowerPoint is available for this message contact me at denn@powerpoint4preaching.com
