God-breathed!

Who’s done it for you?

Who can you do it for?

What can help?

Three questions for us to reflect on this morning.

There’s something very touching and moving about three very personal letters that come at the very end of the set of letters by Paul in the New Testament. I Timothy and II Timothy and Titus are an invitation to be a fly on the wall in a very intimate relationship between a young Christian starting out on his journey of faith and an older Christian who has over the years shaped and influenced that younger Christian’s life.

Over the years they have met, they have talked, they have shared so much. And now the older man is very much older. And the younger man is having to face more and more responsibilities. The older man senses he won’t be around very much longer maybe. Those conversations become more important, they take on a greater significance, and they are fewer and further between.

And then comes that moment when the older man puts pen to paper. And commits to writing reflections on the life he has led, the vision he has shared and the faith that has meant so much to him. How moved the younger man must have been to receive and to read that letter.

Even as he read he could bring to mind times when that older man had a real gift of being able to explain the deep things of life. What a teacher he had been. More than that he had lived out the faith he professed. Somehow he was the kind of person who had discovered a real purpose in life, he knew where he was going. That’s not to say he had had an easy time of it. The younger man could remember times of great difficulty, the chronic illness the older man had had to put up with, family tensions he had experienced, not to mention the times he had suffered physically because of his faith. And yet through it all something had shone out … the fact that he did not bear a grudge. The fact that love shone out of his every word and every action.

In a strange way it had been his experience of suffering that had left the greatest mark, and his patience in facing it, even at the hands of some who had been very cruel. That really did leave a mark.

Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, 11my persecutions, and my suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. 12Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

13And not just persecuted. The Christian faith doesn’t absolve you from suffering … how true young Timothy knew that to be. How much more he wanted to learn of Paul his mentor.

Those words present me with the first of my questions …

Who’s done it for you?

For me I think of my parents. I can think of Sunday school teachers. One of our older deacons in the church I grew up in who had had a very hard life. I can think of people I have known.

But I can also think of people who touched me only momentarily as I went to hear them speak, or followed their story as it unfolded on the news. I think of someone called Richard Wurmbrand who preached in Leicester and I went to listen. A powerful presentation of the Christian faith and a moving account of his response to the persecution of Chrsitians in Eastern Europe and particularly Romania. I can think of someone called Gladys Aylward who had been rejected because she was a woman for missionary service, but purchased her own trans-continental railway ticket all the way to China and had devoted herself to one set of children in the face of the onset of revolution and war. A remarkable teacher, a remarkable person.

The preaching and ministry of Martin Luther King left its mark on me … the awfulness of his assassination.

I have found it more recently seeing at first hand the likes of Elias Chacour and their account of Christian faith lived out in the face of persecution. I watched avidly the day those Chilean miners emerged from incarceration in the mine and the moving testimonies some had to give of a 34th presence with them in the mine. And we have an opportunity to hear one of them give his testimony as he comes to St Matthew’s. Jose Henriquez was the 24th out fo the 33 miners to be released that day. He will be joined by Alfredo Cooper, the Chaplain to the President of Chile in what promises to an inspiring evening.

For me there are a mixture of great people and ordinary people who have shaped and influenced me. Often they are people who have not got away with lives free from suffering, but people who have endured great suffering and have opened up a way through that very real world to the kind of faith that means so much.

Think and treasure those who have done it for you.

And then ask but who can you do it for?

Is it someone in your family, a younger person setting out on their faith in the church family. Who can you pass something on to.

But I am not good enough. I am not up to that.

The ones most influential for me were those most ordinary and who felt they had least to give.

So who can you do it for?

What can I share? How can I rise to such a task? I guess that’s what all of us begin to ask as we are challenged to think in that way.

This is the point at which Paul has some very useful things to share in the wise words he writes to Timothy.

First, he is quite clear that actually there are negative influences around and he warns of them … we have to be on the look out too!

But wicked people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived. 14

But then he urges Timothy to something that at first sight focuses on personalities and individuals.

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15

That’s one piece of wise counsel we would do well to heed. Bear in mind those who have shaped the person you are. Be the person they helped to shape. Keep at it. Don’t give up. Perseverere.

But don’t just idolise a person. It is so easy to slip into a kind of cult of personality. As far as Paul was concerned there was something else to draw on to.

And that is something we too can draw on.

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16


What place do the Scriptures have in shaping us as people? Timothy had been steeped in them since childhood. These were the Sacred Scriptures of the Jewish people …

Little did he think that this very personal letter would become part of the Sacred Scriptures subsequent generations were going to treasure.

Treasure this book.

In its pages are the stories of so many people whose lives were shaped by Jesus Christ and whose stories can shape our lives too. The Christian faith is focused on Jesus Christ and his story is told in these pages. How important it is for us to immerse ourselves in them.

There’s inspiration to be found here. The people whose stories are told felt the touch of God in their lives and the breath of God coming deep within them. The people who passed on the books that make up the Sacred scriptures felt that inspiration of God, the breath of God coming deep within them.

All scripture is inspired by God

I love the word Paul actually uses – it is one that he has coined. Literally it means – God-breathed. It is as if these words have something special in them that is ‘God-breathed’.

and is* useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

Can we be up for that as well? Not just the teaching … but are we prepared to be challenged by what we read, corrected, set right.

Is this for us a training manual in the ways of righteousness and justice?

There are challenges here for us all!

17so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

That’s what it boils down to!

We each of us have a task to do – to belong to God makes a world of difference to us all. But to belong to God means getting stuck in with the good work that we are called to do.

So … never let it be said these pages are just interesting, just an inspiration. They are there to make a difference for each one of us and to shape the very people we are and the things we do.

There’s one more question to ask.

What are we going to do?