Many of you have probably seen the 1995 movie “Mr. Holland’s Opus” starring Richard Dreyfuss. It’s a movie about an aspiring composer named Glenn Holland whose real passion is to compose a symphony, but who takes a job as a high school band teacher to pay the bills and to, he hopes, provide him with the time to write his symphony. But life has a way of edging out our dreams, and he spends the next 35 years teaching high school band, never finishing his symphony. When he retires, all of his former students gather together to honor their high school music teacher. One of his former students, Gertrude Lang, is now a governor, and as she takes the podium she says,
Mr. Holland had a profound influence on my life, on a lot of lives that I know. And yet I get the feeling that he considers a great part of his own life misspent. Rumor had it he was always working on this symphony of his. And this was going to make him famous, rich, probably both. But Mr. Holland isn’t rich and he isn’t famous, at least not outside of our little town. So it might be easy for him to think himself a failure. And he would be wrong, because I think that he’s achieved a success far beyond riches and fame. Look around you. There is not a life in this room that you have not touched, and each one of us is a better person because of you. We are your symphony, Mr. Holland. We are the melodies and the notes of your opus. And we are the music of your life.
This church is full of a whole lot of Glenn Hollands – people who are caring for and influencing the lives of others right where God has placed you. You’re not rich or famous, but like Glenn Holland you’re achieving a success far beyond riches and fame in the lives of the people you are touching.
I hope that over the past three weeks you’ve at least started to get a vision for how God has given all of us the opportunity to care for our community as part of the process of making disciples and how desperately we need the support and encouragement of the entire body in order to be effective in that process. But there is one particular aspect of Glenn Holland’s life that I’d like for us to focus on this morning. It’s the characteristic that we see revealed in Gertrude Lang and in his other students – the idea of perpetuating and passing on what we have been given to the generations which follow.
Obviously, Glenn Holland didn’t invent this principle. Whether he knew it or not, he was merely following a principle that God had put forth in His Word from the very beginning.
We don’t have time to trace that entire history this morning, but I encourage you to take out your Bible and a concordance and look up the words “generation” and “generations” and you’ll find that beginning in Genesis and extending all the way through the New Testament, there is a consistent emphasis on perpetuating the things of God and passing them on to future generations.
But since we’ve been focusing on how we engage in making disciples as we care for our community through the ministry of our members, we’re going to narrow our focus a bit more this morning to see how this concept of perpetuation applies in that area.
As Paul neared the end of his life, locked up in a Roman prison, he wrote a letter to a young pastor in Ephesus named Timothy. Today that letter is included in our Bibles as 2 Timothy. It is almost certainly the last letter written by Paul that has been preserved as part of our Bible. Because Paul realized that his ability to minister was about to come to an end, he was particularly concerned that his work would be carried on by others once he was gone. We’re going to look at just two verses from that letter this morning to help us understand better this Biblical principle of perpetuation.
The first is found near the beginning of the letter:
I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.
2 Timothy 1:5 (NIV)
The second is found near the beginning of chapter 2:
And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.
2 Timothy 2:2 (NIV)
In these two passages, and in the supporting material contained in the rest of this letter, we discover three…
KEYS TO PERPETUATING THE DISCIPLE-MAKING PROCESS
• We must first develop a faith in our own lives that is worth passing on
One of the main reasons that Paul writes this letter to Timothy is that as a young pastor in a difficult church, Timothy is fearful and discouraged. So Paul encourages him at the beginning of His letter by pointing out that Timothy has developed his own faith to the point where it is now of such worth that he needs to pass it on and develop that faith in the lives of others.
I’m convinced that one of the most important things that I can do as a pastor is not just to help you to mature in your faith, but also to encourage you to then pass it on to others. There are a lot of believers who are just like Timothy. They aren’t very confident in their own faith and so they’re afraid to go ahead and start passing that on to others. What Paul was telling Timothy and what I’m passing on to you this morning is that if you are a follower of Jesus, no matter how mature your faith is, you have something that is of value that needs to be passed on and developed in the lives of others.
Even if you’re a baby Christian, you are probably more mature in at least some areas of your faith than another believer. And, at a minimum, you at least know enough about Jesus and what He has done in your life to share that with someone who hasn’t committed their life to Him.
But beyond that, all of us need to be systematically and intentionally growing in our faith, not only for our own benefit, but so that we have something of value to perpetuate in the lives of others.
In our passage from chapter 1, Paul describes two characteristics of a faith that is worth passing on:
o A sincere faith
The word translated “sincere” is a word that literally means “without hypocrisy”.
sincere = “without hypocrisy”
The point Paul is making here is that Timothy’s faith was not an act, like the Greek actors who were called hupokrites because they delivered their lines from behind a mask. In other words, when Paul looked at Timothy’s life, he saw a life that lined up with his professed faith.
Let me share a word of caution with you here. There is an increasingly popular movement in our culture today that claims that the object of our faith doesn’t really matter, just as long as our faith in sincere. According to the adherents of this view, there are many equally valid ways to God and it really doesn’t matter what path you take as long as you are sincere in your beliefs.
Because he was familiar with the words of Jesus Himself, who made it clear that He is the only way to God, Paul would have never bought into such a philosophy. In fact, a little later in his letter to Timothy, we find these words:
Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage - with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
2 Timothy 4:2-4 (NIV)
So our faith needs to be sincere, without hypocrisy, but that sincerity must be grounded in the Word of God which makes it clear that Jesus is the way, the truth, the life and the only way to God.
o A living faith
Not only was Timothy’s faith sincere, you’ll note that Paul described it as a living faith. It was a faith that had first lived in the lives of his mother and grandmother and now was doing the same in Timothy’s life. The word that Paul uses there is a word that means to take up permanent residence.
live = “permanent residence”
In other words the faith of Lois and Eunice, and later Timothy, was not just an occasional visitor to their lives. It was a permanent resident and an abiding presence that guided the way that they lived their lives on a day-to-day basis. This is essentially the same point that James makes in his epistle:
In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
James 2:17 (NIV)
Although many people have tried to argue that Paul and James had different views about the nature and role of faith and works, Paul’s letter to Timothy is a clear demonstration that this is not the case. Paul was reminded of the faith that lived in Timothy’s life because he could observe how Timothy’s faith resulted in actions that demonstrated that faith.
Like Timothy, we need to work to develop a faith that goes beyond mere words, a faith that takes up permanent residence in our lives and guides the way that we live our lives. That’s the kind of faith that is worth passing on.
• We perpetuate our faith in others out of gratitude for those who invested in our lives
Timothy had not developed his sincere, living faith in a vacuum. There were a number of people in his life that had invested in Timothy’s life in order to perpetuate their faith in him.
We know from Acts 16 that Timothy’s father was an unbelieving Greek, but his Jewish mother and grandmother had become followers of Jesus and developed a sincere and living faith in their own lives. But they didn’t just keep it to themselves. They made sure that their faith would be carried on in future generations by investing in Timothy’s life. From the time that Timothy was an infant Lois and Eunice had saturated Timothy’s life with the Word of God:
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
2 Timothy 3:14, 15 (NIV)
Given the male-dominated culture of the day, this is a phenomenal testimony to the godliness and perseverance of Lois and Eunice. They had a precious jewel in their lives, and despite the obstacles they certainly would have faced, they persevered to make sure that Timothy would have that same heritage.
Paul, who was also obviously a key player in the development of Timothy’s faith, wanted to encourage Timothy to perpetuate his faith in the lives of others by reminding him that he was the beneficiary of others who had made that commitment in their own lives.
Nobody becomes a follower of Jesus on his or her own. If you’re a Christian, it is because there is a long history of people who have been helped in the development of their own faith by others and then invested in the lives of others in order to perpetuate that faith.
As Christians we are a part of a living chain of faith that reaches back to Christ Himself. Although Jesus periodically spoke to large crowds, the preponderance of his ministry was spent investing in the lives of a group of eleven men, who along with Paul, took and perpetuated their faith in the lives of others and then prepared others to do the same. That unbroken chain continued through Lois and Eunice and Timothy. And today we are links in that chain. And out of gratitude for those who have come before us as well as out of obedience to Jesus, we need to make sure that the chain remains unbroken for future generations.
• It is the responsibility of every believer to perpetuate our faith by entrusting and equipping
Let’s go back and look at 2 Timothy 2:2 one more time:
And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.
2 Timothy 2:2 (NIV)
Before I get to the main principle that I want to pull from this verse, let me briefly comment on an interesting aspect of what Paul writes here. When Paul writes about “the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses”, he is indicating that, unlike many of the “mystery cults” of the culture around him, faith in Jesus was to be a public matter that was evident to all. Many of those mystery cults, as well as many of the cults in our day seek converts through secret initiations and there is often a hierarchy in which admission to the highest levels is limited to a select inner group. In fact, just this week, I had a couple of people come to my door and offer to give me some materials so that I could understand what the Bible really teaches, implying that without their “inside information” no one could understand the Bible.
One of the great strengths of the Bible is that it is open for all to read and evaluate publicly. And in spite of the efforts of many over thousands of years to discredit its validity and its teachings, the Word of God is just as alive and valuable today as the day it was written.
In this passage there are two critical aspects that are required if we are going to perpetuate our faith in the lives of others. The firs thing we must do is to entrust our faith to reliable people. The word “entrust” means to take something of value and place it on deposit for safekeeping with someone else. It is the same word that Jesus used on the cross:
…"Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."…
Luke 23:46 (NIV)
The word translated “commit” in that passage is the same word that Paul used in 2 Timothy. In the same way that Jesus placed his spirit on deposit with God, we are to take our faith and place it on deposit with reliable men.
In the midst of many of our economic problems right now, most of us are very careful where we deposit our money. It certainly wouldn’t be prudent to deposit our money in an account that wasn’t insured by the federal government.
But our faith is a far more valuable asset, and the implication here is that in the process of perpetuation, we need to be very careful where we invest our limited resources. That’s why Paul encourages Timothy to entrust his faith to reliable men. Although we are certainly to be witnesses for Jesus with everyone who asks us for the reason for the hope that we have (1 Peter 3:15), we need to be wise when it comes to determining where we are going to invest our time and effort in order to perpetuate our faith in the lives of others. Jesus certainly demonstrated that principle. Even though he interacted with many and often preached to large crowds, he invested most of his time with just twelve men, and there is evidence that his deepest and most intimate teaching and training was further limited to just three men - Peter, James and John.
Paul further instructs Timothy to entrust his faith to men who will be qualified to teach others. There is ample evidence from Paul’s own life that Paul didn’t expect that others would be naturally gifted to do that. They would need a lot of training and equipping in order to be able to effectively perpetuate their faith. In fact, one could make a pretty good case that Paul’s most effective ministry came near the end of his life during his two Roman imprisonments. It was during that time that Paul wrote many of his letters which all contained some very practical instruction to the churches regarding this whole concept of perpetuating their faith. At the same time, we also know that Paul had frequent visitors and that he was able to work one on one with these men in order to equip them for the missions that God had in store for them.
We saw that at the end of Ephesians with Tychicus. As Tychicus spent time with Paul over a period of years, Paul invested his life in Tychicus so that when the time was right Paul could send him to Ephesus and Colossae and the surrounding areas not just to deliver a letter, but also to encourage and equip other believers.
So our responsibility as followers of Jesus is two-fold. First, we must determine, with God’s wisdom and guidance, who are those reliable people that God wants me to invest my life in for the purpose of perpetuating my faith. And then, once we make that determination, we need to determine how best to equip those people to not only develop a sincere and living faith in their own lives, but also to continue that unbroken chain of faith by perpetuating their faith in the lives of others.
One of the reasons that we have spent the last four weeks focusing on the importance of caring for our community by partnering with the ministries that the members of this body are already engaged in, is because working together as a body of believers is one of the most effective ways that we are able to perpetuate our faith in the lives of others. Once again this morning, Dana is going to come and share with you how various members of this body are engaging in ministries that are not only caring for our community but also perpetuating their faith.
