Welcome to Unveiled Faces, a Redeemer Presbyterian Church podcast. Please enjoy our feature presentation. Our text this morning is verse 14 and 15. But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned, and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them, and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. May God in his rich blessing to the reading of his holy infallible inspire in that word. You may be seated. The title of an article published a while ago provides a perfect lead-in to our message this morning, and this is the title. You're welcome to have your faith as long as you don't really believe it. It almost sounds like a headline from the Babylon Bee. And I think the author was intending to say this tongue-in-cheek a bit, but it seems to me that it captures quite well the spirit of our age. You're entitled to have your Christian faith as long as you really don't believe it. As you think about that, you realize the Bible doesn't know of such a faith. One place you can verify is right here in these words of the Apostle Paul to Timothy, but continue thou in the things which you have learned has been assured of. The simple, piercing, straight exhortation of the Apostle Paul is that Timothy and all believers behind him are called to continuously cultivate a faith of the deepest conviction. So let's think that, first of all, of the elements of this command. And it is indeed a command. Notice it's an imperative, because the Apostle says to Timothy, but continue. It's in the imperative mood. It's also in the present tense. And so the thrust of the Apostle's command is that Timothy must continue in a state of action. He must continue to be a man of resoluteness and of devotion and discipline and fortitude and focus. He's to exert all of his spiritual energies to this main verb, continue. And there are specifics to this command. Notice here the Apostle Paul says to Timothy, but continue thou in the things which thou hast learned. Now, if you were to peel back this text and examine it in the original, what you would find here is that this word learned comes from the Greek word mentano, which is at the heart of the New Testament concept of discipleship. Mentano. You see, in the sense here of the word is that converts don't come pre-formatted with a hard drive and a disk full of data and information and doctrine. Jesus, when he gives that great commission to the church, says to them, go therefore and make disciples of the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them. to observe while I've commanded you. You see, Jesus Christ, the king and head of the church, gave the church a mission, and that mission was to make disciples, and at the heart of the command and duty to make disciples is to teach. You see, the way we come into maturity in faith is by sitting at the feet of godly teachers. Disciples are made. It's very clear from the whole word of God that we need teachers. And I don't want to in any way undermine the personal duty and responsibility of the believer to take ownership of their faith and seek to grow and grace and knowledge and conviction. That's a spiritual duty. But what concerns me is self-discipleship. An age that puts all of the accent upon personal freedom and autonomy. I've joked before, why have a pastor when all you need to do is just set up an internet connection and use Google search? You see, there's wonderful things that we have access to at literally the tips of our fingers as we sit before a computer and search the internet. that will never replace the need of the believer to be discipled. What Paul highlights and spotlights, and we'll get this to a moment here later, is that Timothy has been instructed, he has been discipled in the faith. And that was by God's design. because discipleship is the ordinary means of growing Christians in faith. Timothy is to continue in the things he was discipled in. Did you have somebody disciple you? Paul would say, think upon those lessons. The other thing he says here, continue in the things that you have been assured of. Assurance is the idea of a proven reliability. This is the only time this word is used in the New Testament. But when you dig down into the guts and the roots and the meaning of this term, it means to embrace something that you are persuaded is thoroughly reliable. So that's what the apostle is pointing Timothy to. He's teaching him to look at the things that he has been instructed in and discipled in and taught in. And he said, those you have already been persuaded of are true. Cling to them. Cling to them. So we have a simple, clear, concise, basic imperative here. Continue. Continue in what you've been trained in. Continue in what you are assured in. But something that I need us to appreciate this morning is that this is a universal obligation. It's a universal obligation. Paul is not simply speaking to disciples. And I take that from the very person that Paul addresses the exhortation to, which is none less than Timothy. And one of the things that you learn about Timothy is that he is a disciple. In Acts chapter 16, we meet Timothy for the first time in the New Testament. And Luke tells us, then he came to Derbe and to Lystra, and behold, a certain disciple was there named Timotheus. This is Paul's second missionary journey. And one of the things that Luke goes out of his way to point out here is that Timothy was a convert. Timothy was a convert and Timothy was converted in one of the roughest neighborhoods of the New Testament to be a Christian. Because if you go back and think with me about Lystra, what do you remember? I hope you remember a crippled man. There was a crippled man outside a town who'd been crippled from his birth. And Paul and Barnabas come up to him and they begin to preach the gospel. And they perform a miracle there in that moment. And that man got up and sprung to his feet and he ran into town. And the very fact of his standing before them was an evident testimony of the power of God. You remember what the townspeople did? They worshiped, not God. They believed that the gods had come down and were in their midst. It took all of the might of the Apostle Paul to seek to turn that multitude away from its idolatry. But you know what happened at the end? Some unbelieving Jews came into the town of Lystra and stirred the whole town up such that they took the Apostle Paul outside of town and they stoned him and they left him for dead. That's the neighborhood that Timothy named Christ in as a disciple. Not a man to be intimidated by unbelief. He was a man distinguished by example because Acts 16.2 tells us he was well reported of by the brethren in Lystra and Iconium. It means to speak respectfully about, to say words that are certifying. And it wasn't Timothy going around telling everybody, I'm certified in faith. No, the text goes out of its way to says he was well-spoken of by the brethren. There's another place in the New Testament this word is used, and that's 1 Timothy 3, 7. As Paul lays out the qualifications of elders, he says that an elder must have a good reputation. of those who are outside the church. Again, we notice that the reputation is furnished not by that individual. The reputation and the certification is from others. It's from without. And so the point here is that Timothy's life was certified. His discipleship and faith was registered as genuine by others. Well, at this point, As Paul addresses this command to Timothy, it's at least a decade later or more. More time has passed. Nothing has changed in Timothy's life. If you turn back in 2 Timothy, just a couple of chapters, you'll notice what the Apostle Paul says of Timothy there. 2 Timothy 1.5, Paul says, when I recall to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois and thy mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in thee also. He says, I can certify you have an unfeigned faith. It is a faith without hypocrisy. It is sincere. It's not mixed. It's a faith that is genuine and true. And the apostle says, I am persuaded is in you. So people of God, I hope you can begin to see the outlines of a universal obligation. Because if Timothy, a man known for maturity and proven Christian character, needs to be exhorted to continue, how much more? Not all wait to hear these words of the apostle do us this morning. We need to continue. And it's a prudent admonition, a prudent admonition. Come back to our text. I'd have us notice here, the construction of Paul's thought. It's fascinating. He says, continue. And that's your main verb. You can underline it. And then what you see here towards the end of verse 14 is this word knowing. Has an ing ending. It means it's a participle. And it means that it modifies this verb continue. So that tells us that there's a way in which Timothy is to continue. There's a reason for it. And the reason for it is because of what he knows. There's two parts to what Timothy knows, and I want to focus on the second one. The first part is knowing of whom you've learned them. We will come back to that. But I want you to notice the second part. and from a childhood thou hast known the Holy Scripture. You see, the prudence of the admonition to Timothy to continue in the things that he has been taught and is convinced of is because that faith which he possesses is rooted and grounded in the Word of God. This is precisely what the Apostle Paul refers to, Holy Scripture. Some of you may have sacred writings. The word's used nowhere else in the New Testament in Greek, but when you study it in external sources, it's the way that Greek-speaking Jews refer to the Old Testament. It's the way they refer to the Old Testament. And so the thought spills on into verse 16. Now, as the apostle Paul continues to speak of those holy scriptures, and what does he say about him? He says, all scripture is given by God. Notice then the prudence of the basis of the obligation to double down on his faith. His faith isn't granted in mythology. It isn't grounded in expert opinion. It's not even founded in the church. The authority of Timothy's faith derives from its source. And what is its source? But nothing other than the word of God. Scripture, breathed out by the Holy Spirit, 16 ounces to the pound. the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of the living God. There's something else in this statement, though, that ought to grab our attention, too, in verse 15. Because notice here what else that Timothy, or rather the apostle, says about scriptures. He says, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through Jesus Christ. There's lots of ways in which the Bible makes us wise. But what's more foundational than this? Wisdom. And to know that you need Christ. I sat under, in secular education and university, I sat under unbelieving Jewish teachers who taught Old Testament and all kinds of stuff. And they marveled at the Proverbs. Do you know what they decided the Proverbs were? Middle class wisdom. They were called middle class wisdom from those who had exercised ingenuity and collected all of that and put it in the Proverbs to teach people the values that were needed to prosper economically. Well, that'd be useless to us. If the Bible didn't make us wise, we might as well just read Aesop's fables. If the Bible didn't make us wise on the salvation, which is the first and the foremost thing that we need, then it's not for us. So what the apostle Paul says to Timothy, another reason why you need to continue in this faith and in these assurances and convictions is because they're grounded and inspired in an infallible word of the living God, and they make you wise unto Christ. And so Timothy and all of us are commanded to continue because there's nothing that's more important and more necessary and essential to our life than a daily dose of Jesus Christ and saving grace. There's no way forward in the Christian life without it. Because the Bible has the wisdom to teach us that we are sinners. The Bible has the wisdom to teach us that the offense of our sin is against the righteous and holy God who pours out his wrath against those who violate it. And the wisdom of scripture is to say that poor sinner enslaved in his sin, under the wrath and curse of God, that there's one way out and one way alone. It's not through rituals. It's not through bland spirituality. It's not through religion. It's through the blood of Jesus Christ. And so people of God, this morning, the beginning point of taking up this command continues with Christ. You can't take up the command until you've gone to the cross. It's for those who've been saved by grace. So if you're hearing this message this morning and you've never come to the foot of the cross and you've never acknowledged and confessed your sins before God and Jesus Christ, Then just stop right there. Just stop right there and know, first of all, this morning, the promise of scripture, John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. That's where we start this morning, if you don't know Christ. Know the love of God which is in Christ by coming to the cross and being washed in his blood from all of your sins. Flee from the wrath of God which is to come that ends in perishing. That's for you this morning. That promise is sure and certain that if you come unto Jesus Christ with all of the brokenness that is you and all of your sins and all of your corruption and all of your failure, he will not cast you out. Come to him. But if you have come to him, the verb is for you, continue. Continue. Continue if you have already come to Jesus Christ and you have been saved by faith. Continue. I love how the apostle puts it, another letter to the Thessalonians. At one point he says to them, you know, you all are doing great. And then what does he say? Abound more. If you've begun to respond to the verb continue, the admonition of the apostle Paul to you this morning is to continue. Abound more in your continuing. There's no termination date. We might think this morning, why in the world does the apostle give this command to Timothy? I think that's very important to consider. I've read over this verse forever. Till one day I realized there's a sermon here. It's not the setup for verse 16. I've read it for 30 years and didn't realize that. There's a sermon here. There's a reason why the command is given. And you can see the reason it's given is because there's a massive problem. So look back with me at verse 13. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived." Now, the translation, the King James Version, I don't mean to beat up on it, doesn't adequately connect the text. A New American Standard, I argue, at this point does a very good job because it says, So there's a grammatical indicator in the text that verse 14 is inseparably connected to verse 13. And so notice what's lurking out there in verse 13. Evil men and seducers waxing worse and worse. That's the backdrop to the command to continue. The apostle sees as a gathering thread of false teachers who will keep rising up in every single age of the church. Notice how he describes them in chapter four, verse three. The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lust, keep to themselves Teachers having itching ears. Who is Paul speaking of? He's speaking of the church. He's speaking of professing believers who've grown weary of soundness. And because they have itching ears, which is a fantastic way to communicate the sentence, the professing believer has the itching ears, not the false teachers. But because we get bored of the same old stuff, isn't that terrible? Isn't that horrible about us? We get tired of hearing the same story. I had a man once that I tried to disciple. He could never commit to becoming a member of the church, but he thought he had encyclopedic knowledge of Calvinism. And he could talk to points. He could go to the scriptures. He could see the point of it all, how it fit together like a puzzle. And one day he called me and he said, Pastor John, what's the point? I already know all this stuff. What's left? And I said, Daniel, do you know what's left for you to do? for the rest of the life to contemplate the mercy of God in Christ for your sin. Do you know what he said? That's just not enough. We can get so full of our doctrinal platitudes and ideas and our well-worn practices that after a while, they just look so plain. And we get itching ears. And when we get itching ears, what happens? We end up in falsehood. And oh, what a vile, ugly stream I've seen, and I'm sure your pastor has seen over the years of ministry, of one confessing Christian after another, realizing that they were bored. And they got itching ears. and they were swept away by the tide of false Christianity. People of God, this command is an imperative that we must all heed and internalize precisely because of two things. One, our hearts are sinful and therefore are open to being deceived. And number two, there are all kinds of people who hate Jesus Christ, who use his name to deceive. And it's terrifying. And the result of it all is located in verse four, and they will turn, they will turn away their ears from the truth. I don't know what could be more terrifying. than to know that. Turn our ears from the truth and replace it with lies. You see, because we're under constant satanic assault, the Apostle Paul gives us this calling. Continue. Continue. And the thing that he says to do is continue, continue in this faith. And I want to spotlight two things here. Continue by means of trusted teachers. Continue by means of trusted teachers. Come back to verse 14 of chapter three. Come back to the latter part of verse 14, continuing the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them. See, he's given the basis of why he's to continue. And I find that utterly fascinating. Remember this idea of discipleship? You were discipled. He said, reflect on that and notice who he's discipled by. Chapter 1, verse 5, he says, I call to remembrance the unfeigned fate that is in thee, which first dwelt on thy grandmother Lois and thy mother Eunice. See that? Timothy was discipled in faith by his grandmother and his mother. And he sat on his mama's knee and what did he hear? But scripture. He heard them sing the Psalms. He heard them impart the faith. And his convictions were formed under the godly teaching and example of his mother and his grandmother. Mothers, you have the most important job in all of the world in being a mother. There's no greater honor. There's no greater calling than to be a mother to your children. because the mark that you leave on the world will not be estimated or valued based upon your tax returns and your bank account. It will be upon the children whom you train up in Christ. I know fathers are to take the lead, but this is a great opportunity to tell mothers this is wonderful work. I know it's difficult because I watched my wife do it with three sons. It's beautiful. Continue in it. But there's also a way to do that, and I think it's bound up in the very way that a child is taught because the apostles thought spills over from verse 14, knowing whom you've learned it from and that from a child, thou hast known the Holy Scripture. That word child is brephos. It means infant. It can mean infant all the way to a toddler. But the idea is that from the time Timothy was a baby in his crib, his mother and his grandmother were teaching him the scriptures. And how does a mama do that? Well, she does it just like the children's catechism, right? Who made you? What else did God make? All things. Why did God make you in all things? For his own glory. That's a foundation for faith for the rest of your life. There are no more profound philosophical questions to reflect on. From the crib to the university, boiled down into simple, One word statements, doing this over and over and over and over again. Simple truth communicated in simple ways. Paul looks at that and he says, Timothy, that was your training. And no matter how much you have matured and grown as a man, as my understudy, And the apostle Paul, by some, is regarded as one of the most profound intellects of antiquity. F.F. Bruce makes a tremendous argument for that. One of the greatest minds. Timothy got to sit under him for years. And yet, in a self-deprecating remark, the apostle doesn't say, Timothy, remember all the profundity of my teaching. No, he says, remember. from whom you have learned them and how you learned it. You learned it line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little from your godly mothers. He said, look upon the organic roots of your faith. People of God, that's what Paul is driving at when he says continue. And this morning, I know you don't need to be told this, but I simply reiterate what you know. There's a bright orange target painted on your forehead. The devil, the world, and the flesh seeks your mind. The devil, the world, and the flesh seeks your mind. And even if it cannot corrupt your thoughts, it will do this. It will seek relentlessly to soften your convictions. Remember our introductory statement. You can have your faith as long as it's not full of conviction. That's what the world wants. You can have your faith. You can have your pitiful little ideas, your spirituality. It's good for you. Just don't have any convictions. Because the last thing that the devil, the world, and the flesh want is a knowledgeable and convicted Christian church, which is ready to take a stand. One thing I love to hear when I come here is your conversations and your prayers. You're always praying about believers making a difference and giving examples of people and organizations that are taking a stand. But you see, what these enemies of Christ and the church don't want are people who are bold. And yet that's precisely what is needed today in the church and the world is to be bold. And so my question to you is, will you be? Will you be? Paul here in this admonition to Timothy calls him not to coast, but to continue. Not to coast, but to continue. And that means that each and every one of us here are responsible for all that we have been taught and discipled in and for the convictions that have been forged and fashioned within us by the Spirit of God taking the Word of God and graciously working it into our hearts and minds. Whatever it is that you've been given, you take all of it. You take all of it, all of your knowledge, all of your convictions, and you continue in Scripture, and you continue in Christ. And if you do that, God, by His grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, will make you firm and fortified and abounding in Christ and His service. This has been a presentation of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. For more resources and information, please stop by our website at visitredeemer.org. All material herewithin, unless otherwise noted. Copyright Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Elk Grove, California. Music furnished by Nathan Clark George. Available at nathanclarkgeorge.com.