Title: Keep It Simple
Text: II Timothy 2:8-15
Thesis: There is much about life that is complicated but when it comes to living our faith, we do it best when we keep it simple.
Introduction
They say that the memory is the first thing to go…
Two elderly gentlemen were sitting together on a park bench – not the two guys in the Volkswagen Commercial where one guy slugs the other every time a “red-one” or a “black-on” passes by. One of the gentlemen said to the other, “You know, I can’t remember things like I used to… I know I’ve known you all my life but I can’t for the life of me, remember your name. What is your name?”
The other gentleman thought for a moment and asked, “Can I get back to you on that?”
Though memories can be troubling and we may speak of having to “cope” with the past, memory is a wonderful thing and we enjoy reminiscing from time to time.
Sometimes remembering is about:
• Recall or recollection as in “I remember the time…”
• Recapturing an experience as in reliving an experience in your mind…
• Remembering as in remembering to express appreciation for a kindness.
• Remembering can mean remembering to pray for someone.
• Remembering can mean remembering to recognize someone’s achievements or to celebrate their birthday
Our text today begins with the word “remember.”
I. Remember Christ is risen
Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descendant of David. This is my gospel , for which I am suffering…” II Timothy 2:8-10
We are encouraged to remember two things:
A. Remember Jesus Christ is risen and alive forevermore, i.e., remember Jesus is diety.
B. Remember Jesus Christ is descended from David, i.e., remember Jesus was human.
Paul wrote in Romans 1:3-4 of Jesus Christ, “Who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, who through the power of the Spirit was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.”
When I was in high school I was always hustling ways to make a few bucks. Depending on the season I delivered groceries for a local grocer after school and on Saturdays. For a time I worked for Rudy Pestotnik, who was the owner of The Lincoln Grill, which was the place to eat in our little town. Rudy was quite the Rudy and ran a tight ship. He often catered dinners in the evenings in his second floor banquet room above the grill… he liked to do it up nicely so he hired me and another kid in town to dress up in black slacks, wear white shirts and black ties and with a towel draped over our arms, sent us forth to be waiters.
Rudy was a crotchety old curmudgeon, but unbeknown to most of us, he had donated substantial ly in the creation of the Ogden Community Scholarship Fund that was started in 1964. He was determined that every kid who wanted to go to college would receive financial assistance.
I recently received a letter from the Ogden Community Scholarship Foundation asking OHS alumni to contribute to the scholarship fund. And I thought of Rudy.
That is one kind of remembering… I remembered a man who was once my employer and a community benefactor. Rudy has been dead for forty years but I remembered him and was inspired by the memory of his example.
However, that is not the kind of remembering in our text today. Paul does not ask Timothy to be inspired by the memory of a dead guy who did an extraordinarily good or heroic deed.
The remembering in our text is present tense. It means to: Keep on keeping on remembering that Jesus Christ, who lived among us and knows all about what it means to be human, is alive and well and forever present with us. So, be inspired by remembering Christ is present and that you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength.
So first of all, we keep it simple by simply remembering to remember Christ is alive and with us.
The second simple word of encouragement is the reminder to keep our faith.
II. Keep your faith
If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself. II Timothy 2:11-13
In verse 10 Paul wrote of endu
ring anything and everything in order that others may come to faith in Christ and receive salvation in him, with future glory.
Just as there are many implications to what it means to remember, there are a number of ways to think of what it means to endure. Sometimes to endure means to simply have patience. Other times enduring requires a great deal of hardship, suffering and courage.
I recently read a story about a man living in Bihar, India who grew weary of having to walk over four miles to get to his fields, which lay on the other side of a mountainous formation. When I read of it I thought of the Eisenhower Tunnel and of how from either direction, I- 70 approaches an impassable mountain. But someone had the where-to-for to envision a tunnel. Today we can be buzzing along on I-70 from the east on a bright sun-shiny day, zip through the tunnel and pop out on the other side into a blinding snow storm.
Ramchandra Das took a hammer and chisel and for fourteen years chipped away a 33-foot long and 13-foot wide opening so now he and the other villagers can now simply walk through a 33-foot long tunnel to reach their fields. (www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/3010/february/3022210.html)
That’s the kind of enduring Paul speaks of in our text. It is the enduring that bears up courageously under hardship and suffering. It is the kind of endurance that does not just put up and live under a crushing circumstance… it pushes back and persists through the most daunting and challenging of obstacles.
In our text the Apostle Paul is writing this letter to Timothy from a prison cell where he has been incarcerated as a criminal for being a Christian. In this context we need to understand that Paul is writing about the very real possibility of martyrdom… of dying for his faith in Christ. Despite all of the implications and threats, the kind of endurance he speaks of is endurance that is ongoing for an extended period of time.
And so he wrote:
A. If we died with him, we will also live with him;
B. If we endure, we will also reign with him.
C. If we disown him, he will also disown us;
D. If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.
There are two positive statements: If we died with him we will live with him and if we endure, we will reign with him. There are two negative statements: If we disown Christ, he will disown us and if we are faithless, he will remain faithful.
If we keep the faith we are assured that we will be kept in Christ… that is the first motivation for enduring and keeping the faith.
However if we disown Christ and/or become faithless, i.e., settle in to a state of unbelief, refusing to believe in or obey Christ… Christ will be true to his word and we will be lost. It is a sobering thought to realize that Christ will remain faithful even to the point of rejecting us.
The first simple word of encouragement was to remember and the second simple word of encouragement is to keep on keeping on in the faith.
1. We keep it simple by simply remembering to remember Christ is alive and with us.
2. We keep it simple by keeping on keeping on in the faith.
The third simple word of encouragement is to:
III. Do your best for God
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. II Timothy 2:14-15
God’s Word has encouraged Christians down through the centuries to “make every effort” or to “do your best” so that we may receive God’s approval.
There was a time when I wore Levi jeans… Levi Strauss came to San Francisco from Bavaria in 1853 to open a western branch of his families New York city dry-goods store. In the 1870’s he began to sell denim over-alls and in the 1920’s, Levi Strauss & Company began to sell the modern denim jeans.
Levi’s are the kind of jeans that you wear out. You wear them and you wear them until they become so thin and threadbare that they cannot be worn any longer. It took a long time to break them in so they would fit and wear well.
It was always fun to buy and break in a new pair of Levi’s. I think you can buy them already broke-in now and all pre-faded to have that worn look. But pre-shrunk was as good as it got them so when I got home I would put on my Levi’s. I would reach into one of the front pockets and pull out that little white slip of paper that read, “Inspected by # 12.” (Or whatever the inspector’s number was…)
Someone at the Levi factory had taken the time check to see that the seams were sown, the buttons and the button holes on the fly were good, the pockets were straight and whatever else inspectors at the Levi factory inspected.
When you bought them they were approved as having met the standards of old Levi Strauss & Co.
The word approved in Paul’s culture was a powerful word.
A. Approved / Dokimos
B. Unapproved / Dokimastos
In the business of masonry stone cutters or brick makers were charged with casting or cutting precision stones. When the stone was approved it was stamped as Dokimos or Approved. When it did not meet the necessary standards it was stamped Adokimastos which meant it was tested and found wanting.
The bible encourages us to do our best and to be stamped “Approved” by God for two specific reasons:
1. So we will not be ashamed or embarrassed by the lives we’ve lived
2. So we will be able to correctly understand and handle the Word of God
Just as the word approved conjures images of an inspector examining a product or a person to make sure they have met certain standards, the words “rightly dividing” or “correctly handles” the Word of God suggests several images that help us understand the meaning of the text.
Do you remember when you were a kid and your mother would cut a cake and give you a slice… the first thing you did was look at the pieces the other kids got to make sure their piece was not bigger than your piece. You’ve probably said or heard, “Hey! His piece is bigger than mine.”
Or you’ve ordered a pizza. You bring the box into the kitchen and pop the lid open and the first thing you see is that the person cutting the pizza must have been a total nit-wit. How hard is it to run the pizza cutter so that the slices have some semblance of similarity in portion? There should be eight perfectly equal and symmetrical pizza wedges when the pizza is cut.
Rightly dividing or correctly handling means you carefully divide or cut up or dissect or interpret the bible so that you understand it and teach it in such a way that it is understood and practiced correctly.
The person who is approved does not twist and distort the Word of God. The person who is approved does not espouse some of the Word of God while ignoring the rest.
Conclusion
Because engineers tend to over-engineer and animators tend to over animate and public speakers tend to over-speak, the acronym “KISS” for “Keep It Simple Stupid” is applied with a broad brush. The acronym itself has its variations and wider applications. One such variation is Keep It Short and Simple, which is generally thought to be good advice to a pastor. Another variation tightens the intent even more: Keep It Short and Straightforward.
This morning the short and simple and most straightforward teaching regarding how to best live out your Christian life is this:
• We keep it simple by simply remembering to remember Christ is alive and with us.
• We keep it simple by keeping on keeping on in the faith.
• We keep it simple when we do our best to receive God’s approval.
