Growing in Christ

A Sermon on 2 Timothy 2:2

ME - Learning from my Grandparents

Almost everything I know how to do, I know because someone took the time to teach me.

I learned how to grow a garden from my grandmother and my mother. Standing in their gardens as a kid. They didn't hand me a book. They handed me a trowel.

I learned how to work on small engines and how to handle the basic repairs around the house from my grandpa and my dad. 

None of this came from reading about it. It came from someone older, who knew, who slowed down long enough to bring me alongside them.

Some things don't survive on their own. They survive because someone hands them on.

WE - Mother’s Day and Faith Passed Down

Today is Mother's Day, and for most of us, when we think about how we came to faith, the first face that comes to mind isn't a pastor's or a Sunday school teacher’s, it's a mother's or a grandmother's. Maybe a father's or a grandfather's. Someone who knew you, loved you, and took the time in the early years of your life.

Most of us didn't come to faith because of a sermon. We came to faith because someone made it real to us. They lived it out at the kitchen table, in the garden, in the garage, or in the ordinariness that is life.

Here's the question for us this morning: who is that person for the next generation?

The gospel is always one generation away from being lost. It doesn't survive on its own. It survives because faithful people hand it on.

GOD — 2 Timothy 2:2

Paul's situation

Paul is writing his last letter. He's in a Roman prison. He knows he's not getting out (2 Tim. 4:6, "I am already being poured out like a drink offering").

His final concern isn't his comfort or his legacy. His concern is the gospel: will it survive?

The text

"And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others." (2 Tim. 2:2)

Notice the chain — four links:

Paul received it from Christ.

Paul entrusted it to Timothy.

Timothy entrusts it to reliable people.

Those reliable people teach still others.

This is how the church survives.

The word "entrust" — paratithēmi

To place something precious into someone's care. Like handing someone the keys to your house. Like leaving your child with a sitter. It's a deposit you trust them to keep.

The doctrinal pivot

In chapter 1, Paul said "guard the good deposit" (1:14). Chapter 2 tells us how: by giving it away.

In Paul's mind, guarding the gospel and handing it on are not two different things. They are the same thing. The gospel is preserved by being passed on.

Mother's Day connection — 2 Timothy 1:5

Just one chapter earlier, Paul wrote: "I am 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."

Timothy's faith didn't fall out of the sky. It came through his grandmother and his mother. They handed him the deposit.

And now Paul is telling Timothy to do for others what Lois and Eunice did for him.

I think about the gardens my grandmother and my mother taught me to grow. A garden is a perfect picture of what Paul is describing.

A garden takes patience. You can't rush it. You plant in the spring and you wait. You water and you wait. You pull weeds and you wait. The fruit comes on God's timeline, not yours.

A garden takes knowledge that doesn't transfer easily. There's a feel to when the soil is ready. A look to a tomato that's almost ripe. A smell to compost that's working right. You don't learn that from a book, you learn it standing next to someone who already knows.

And a garden produces fruit that's not just for you. The point of a garden isn't to admire it. The point is to feed people. To share what grew.

That's the gospel. Planted in us by faithful people, tended over years, producing fruit meant to feed others.

If grandma never invites her granddaughter into the garden, the garden doesn't survive her. And neither does the gospel, unless we bring people in.

YOU - Be discipled and be discipling

Two questions for each of us this morning.

First, who handed the gospel to you? Name them. Thank God for them. If they're still alive, call them today.

Second, who are you handing it to?

Notice what Paul didn't say. He didn't tell Timothy to find experts. He said "reliable people." Faithful. Available. Willing.

And here's something worth saying clearly: discipleship isn't just one kind of thing. My grandmother taught me in the garden. My grandfather taught me in the garage. Both were discipleship of a sort — both were patient, both were hands-on, both required showing up over and over again until something stuck.

The same is true of faith. Discipleship happens at the kitchen table and on the workbench. It happens in the garden and in the deer blind. It happens wherever a believer one step further along brings someone one step behind into what they already know.

Some of you are wondering, "Am I qualified for that?" If you're a Christian, you are one step ahead of someone. You know something they don't. You've walked through something they haven't. And the gospel you've received was never meant to stop with you.

WE - Be investing in the next generation

This is what we're trying to be at Ellsworth CRC. A church where everyone is both a learner and a leader.

Where the people a step further along reach back to help the ones behind them.

Where no one is too new to be invested in, and no one is too seasoned to keep learning.

The healthiest churches aren't the ones with the best or most programs. They're the ones where the chain of discipleship stays unbroken.

On this Mother's Day, we remember that we are here today because someone, often a mother, often a grandmother, sometimes a father, sometimes a grandfather, sometimes a friend handed it on to us.

The question is whether the next generation will be able to say the same.

Close

The deposit is in our hands. It was faithfully entrusted to us by grandmothers and mothers, by grandfathers and fathers, by pastors and friends.

Now the only question left is what we do with it.

Will we hold it tightly to ourselves? Or will we hand it on?

Because the gospel is never meant to stop with us.