Well, good morning everybody. Trevor Faggott is my name and I'm going to be responsible for the opening address as we study the letter of 2 Timothy over these two days. And it's really always a great privilege to be able to do some study, some extra work really in thinking about a letter in the Bible in order to communicate something of the written word to others. So thanks again for coming today to hear and to share what the speakers have prepared. It's a lovely thing to be able to be enriched by God's word. I'm going to just entitled my address really, a flame, just that's it, there's a flame and it's one word and maybe just have in your mind the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon those who received the word and they came and they understood the gospel and the fire, these tongues of fire rested upon them and they were enabled or equipped to communicate the beautiful message of the gospel of what God has done in Christ to those around about them and we are recipients today because their hearts burned, they were aflame this wonderful word. My text I'm going to read from the new RSV when I was in Theological College in Park and Wesley, the Uniting Churches Theological College, that was the text that they or the version of the Bible that they were using and some 30 years later, 35 years later maybe, I'm still using the same version so how about that and I've liked the ESV and the NIV but this is from the new RSV, here we go, from 2 Timothy the first chapter, Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God for the sake of of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus. To Timothy, my beloved child, grace and mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I'm grateful to God, whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did. when I remember you constantly in my prayers, night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I'm reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois, and your mother Eunice and now, I'm sure, lives in you. For this reason, I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. Now, the theme of our two days together, if you had that little handout, little card that came your way, the theme is faith for the last days. And if I can just make a little three-point comment from the outset, we need, one, a living faith for living in Christ in these last days, a living faith, a faith that lives in us. And we also need both to keep the faith and to teach others the faith. And as we do that, not teach another gospel in the last days, so stick to the matter. So there's three points from the outset, a living faith, keep the faith and teach the faith in these last days. My talk title, Aflame, reminds me of really the The matter of John the Baptist who contrasted his ministry of water baptism, baptising people in the Jordan to get the people to turn back to God, turn back to worship, to truth and so on, calling them to repentance and faith again, the whole nation. Then in contrast it was said of Jesus that he would come, he would follow on and he would come into the world from above and this Jesus would baptise a new humanity with the Holy Spirit and with fire. So Matthew's Gospel, chapter three and verse 11, there's that lovely phrase there. I'll just read it for you. I baptise you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. And then he went on to say that this fire had this certain effect. He said, his winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear the threshing floor and will gather the wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. So there's an anticipation that this Holy One coming from God will have a burn up of that which is not true and bring to the human race a burning of fire and enthusiasm as the Holy Spirit comes to this new humanity. The hymn we just sang, which is Charles Wesley's hymn, he wrote this somewhere between 1750 to 1788, I'm not sure when exactly he wrote this hymn. But we're still singing that hymn today. because he wanted to pass the word through to other human beings in a singing form, in a poetic manner. And he wrote, you know, some 8,000 of these tunes. And, you know, if he wrote a new one every day, that would only have been, you know, 365 in one year. And if he wrote, you know, did that for 10 years, that'd only be 3,650. So if he did it for 20 years, that must have been a new hymn he wrote every day for 20 years, a new song to bless. What were the congregations thinking? Oh, not another new one. We've only just learnt a couple, you know. He was on fire. He was a man who sang the gospel out across the nations of the world. And you can go to the Pacific Islands, places everywhere. But, you know, started there in England in that Anglican church. and a fire spread across the world and, you know, the beautiful prayer he says in poetic form, he asks the Lord to rekindle the flame of holy fire to stir the gospel. He said, on the mean altar of our hearts. You know, he knew our stinginess in terms of we've been given this rich abundant gospel and yet somehow or another the mean altar of our hearts needed to burn a fraction of you there. And so, and he said, there to let it burn with inextinguishable blaze so it actually never goes out. He also prays that he may guard the fire-fuelled gospel, still let me guard that holy fire so it spreads to others in their working and in their speaking and in their thinking. So a whole human race is filled with this wonderful blazing news and of course of God himself. Let's pause to pray, let us pray. Father we give thanks for the tongues of fire that rested upon the first believers on the day of Pentecost and as they were filled with the Holy Spirit in a similar way we pray that the Spirit of God will impart that same pure celestial fire to us that we may be aflame with the gospel, with faith for the last days. In Jesus, your wonderful name we pray. Amen. The first major sort of focus for my talk, and it centres really around verse six, is this. when Paul writes to Timothy, I remind you to fan into flame, this is the NIV says that, rekindle, fan into flame, you know when you've woken up and you've been camping on that weekend and there's just a little glow there maybe you kick a few dark holes and think is there anything still going there and hello there's something you think might be down there so you get a few twigs or a little bit of paper and You just blow gently across there and up it comes. Beautiful. New day, new morning, new fire. And Paul is saying to Timothy, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands. And so he's saying to bring to flame what you've been given. It's a wonderful treasure in earthen vessels, to mix the metaphors, but you've been given this wonderful, truthful insight into what God's plan is for the world. You know the Messiah is promised to be with you till the close of the age. You understand the cross, the gospel, what took place on the cross for the world to take away the sins of the world. For God so loved the world that he gave his son that whoever should believe him should never perish, but have eternal life and so this is the burning heart that Timothy's, he knows these things but he needs to stir up a fan into flame, his gifts and understanding. This is the Apostle Paul who's writing this letter and we'll look at that in a moment. When Paul speaks of laying on of my hands, It's because this aging apostle, and Paul is, we've sort of in the research, you'll find if you look at 2 Timothy, Paul's an aging man. He's not far from dying. This is close to the end of his earthly ministry where he's living and breathing as such as we are. And So it's a really poignant letter. It's full of depth and beauty. But the ageing apostle Paul is reminding a much younger Timothy of the gift of the apostolic gospel. His first few words, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. And so this apostolic gospel is what? It is an apostle is what? An apostle is someone who has witnessed the risen Christ, they've seen him. So Paul is the, Paul come lately, I was gonna say Johnny come lately, he's the untimely born one, the last after those disciples who were first to sort of witness his resurrection, but Paul on the road to Damascus. has seen the risen Christ and so he has apostolic authority not just because he's seen the risen Christ but he has the gift of interpreting the scriptures and he has the capacity to glean from all that's been written, the law and the prophets and the Psalms and so on, and to show that this is God's Messiah, this is the one we've been waiting for, and to bear witness to his resurrection, and so he has that authority from Christ, the apostillo, the one who is sent, so he's sent from Christ Jesus to do this task, and that's what he's about in his apostolic ministry and he's passing on with his apostolic authority the Gospel to Timothy in a way that he'll be able to pass it on to others. So the The gift was passed on to Timothy also to preach to others. A little further on in his letter, someone else will bring this out, but he has the gift of an evangelist. He's to fulfill his gift of evangelism that is overflowing in the teaching and in the proclamation of the gospel. And in 2 Timothy 4.3, Paul's urgent words are often used in ordaining people. So Timothy has been ordained, I myself was ordained down at Victor Harbour in the little congregational church there on the roundabout where you turn and go out towards the harbour traders and so on. And the church elders and others, the leaders, the presbytery laid hands on me ordaining me to that ministry. We, just as a local congregation, the Church of Christ congregation, we ordained, some of you know, Troy Canham and we sent him out from our church without the same level of fuss and flamboyance and everything else that happened in my denomination. We, from a Church of Christ, was simply the local elders recognised his gifts and abilities and he was sent out from the church. So that ordaining matter has happened in fancy ways and less fancy ways but Timothy has been given this and this is what's often read at an ordination throughout the history of the church, these words from Timothy which again, it's not to steal anyone's thunder, just to remind you what's going to happen. In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you, RSV, preach the word, be urgent, in season and out of season, convince, rebuke and exhort, be unfailing in patience and teaching, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but have itching ears, they'll accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings. But as for you, Timothy, stick at it, stick at it, stick at it. There's going to be all that stuff going on. People are going to waffle into all sorts of things that are not genuine sound teaching. But as for you, you stay with it. Our talks are about passing on the faith and about having the courage, faith and tenacity to stick at it amidst difficulty. And I'm really thankful that we can be here in the Norton Summit Baptist Church. And you know that amidst the grief and sorrow, the tears, the sadness that they've all felt, In Dan suddenly going home to the Lord, it's in season and out of season. It's not just when we're in celebratory, cheerful mode. It's amidst grief and sorrow and difficulty. that we have a word, a wonderful word to share and proclaim and it's very beautiful that the elders here said, no, let's do it here, let's do it here. I can see Dan, you know, applauding and giving it the thumb up, you know, and it's, It's a ministry that he has had, which has culminated in a way in our gathering here today, not long after he's gone. But his work is going on. He's still speaking his faithfulness to the word. And that's what we will see happens as Paul passes on the baton. He hands to Timothy responsibility and that gospel action is going to go on. My second thing I'd like to sort of bring to our notice, the first, just having been that matter of the flame and the being a flame, is just simply who this letter is about or who it's from and who it's to. And I thought I'd just take a few moments to tease out some sort of facts that others have collected for us really. It's the second letter of Paul to Timothy and both 1 Timothy and Acts and then we could include Titus and other letters where Paul is They give us an understanding of where Paul is at within his ministry. They help us to hear the passion and and the urgency of this letter. A bit about Paul at this stage. The letter was probably written sometime shortly after AD 62, and look, in theological colleges and in books, people argue about it. You know, someone will have 63 and 64. I'm going with 62, so that's what you've got, okay? His 30-year-long ministry, which began when Jesus met him on the road to Damascus, around about AD 33, is now virtually over. So he's had 30 years in ministry. My first parish was over at Mount Barker in 1993, and I've got a 30-year-old son, so kind of... bit of match going on there, jinx padlock as my kids would say, anyway. So he's had a 30 year long ministry and Paul was converted to Christ Jesus in his say mid-20s, he's now in his mid-50s. He's preached in cities, in towns and across what is today Europe and the Middle East. He's planted churches, he's defended the truth, he's strengthened churches, he's contended with heresy. He's contended with false gospels in Galatia. He's contended with false apostles in Corinth. He's had a mass apostasy nearby in Asia. And he's suffered shipwreck three times. He has been flogged and had the 39 lashes. He's had beatings, stonings, imprisonment. opposition from his own dear Jewish friends and now from Nero in Rome. Hanley Moll, one of the older commentators, he wants to give us what Christianity was going like around about this time as Paul was in that jail and this is what he says. Christianity trembled, humanly speaking. It was on the verge of annihilation. Wow, what a context for Paul to write this letter. It's on the verge of annihilation, so there's a lot going in. Christian faith's been shared and so on, but the church is wobbling here and there, teachers and so on. His opponents, like Alexander the Coppersmith, who gets a mention in the letter, have done him great harm. As a prisoner, He was chained and he has the sense that his time is near to the Lord for him to go home and the Lord is near to him. He's fought the good fight and he's finished the race. He said, I'll finish the race. He's done. You know, the thing that occurred to me about this, I'm 65. And I've got some mates, when I first left school, we went through the police academy together, and they, who stuck with it, most of them have retired on a pretty handy, nice little sum. Anyway, I ended up going farming and then went into the ministry. And here I am thinking, yeah, it probably wouldn't be bad to, you know, pull up stumps now, just give it a go for the easier life from here through. And when I read this letter of the Apostle Paul, I am moved. I see a guy's in prison, he's around his race, but when you see what he does and what he's up to in the letter, he's still jogging on. He's on the finish line, over the finish line, he's ready for another lap, do you know? Because he is so wanting this to reach the nations of the world, he's got a global vision of who Jesus Christ is for the world and he can't help himself, he's just there. So this is a moving letter, it's a moving letter. A little bit about Timothy, he's been Paul's missionary companion, for about 15 years, so it's not like he's just some dude he knows a little bit. They've been together, been in the trenches, working together, sharing the gospel from town to town. So if he was in his early 20s when called from his hometown of Lystra, you can read about that in the book of Acts, he's probably now in his late 30s. He's travelled with Paul, in his second and third missionary journeys, and Paul sent him as an apostolic delegate to Thessalonica, 1 Thessalonians 3.1, and to Corinth, 1 Corinthians 4.17. He's accompanied Paul to Jerusalem, and may have even been in the voyage to Rome. He was in Rome during Paul's first imprisonment. We see from the letter of Philippians, Paul and Timothy, the letter comes from them together. Philippians 1.1. Paul is a prisoner of Christ Jesus and Timothy, our brother, that's in Philemon. And then he says of Timothy, I have no one like Timothy, who'll be genuinely concerned for your welfare. He's the best. I've got no one like him. He's like a son with a father. He has shared with me in the work of the gospel. And his father was Greek, Acts 16, 1 to 5, you can see there. His mother was a Jewish woman who was a believer. And so was his grandmother. We hear that he had genuine faith. in the God who would bring that Messiah eventually along and now he's come. And Timothy was circumcised, Paul had Timothy circumcised so there wouldn't be any chatter about that, just got it done, you know, is he the real deal, you know? Well, we'll get you circumcised, ouch, as an adult, but anyway. Yet humanly speaking, so this is Timothy, he's travelled, he's been with Paul, he's a bit of a campaigner, yet humanly speaking, and this is from John Stott, one of the most beautiful exegetes we've had in scripture over the, you know, the last sort of 50 years or so. John Stott says this, Humanly speaking, Timothy was hopelessly unfit to assume these weighty responsibilities of leadership in the church, humanly speaking, and so Paul writes to him and he's got deep, he longs to see him, he wants him to come and visit him. But he writes to him, one because he's relatively young and so in 1 Timothy he says at one point, let no one despise your youth. Just because you're young doesn't mean you don't and can't know the gospel. You can know it really young. It's funny when sometimes children correct, you know, a preacher and say that's not really quite right because they know, you know, young people know the truth of the word. He was prone to illness. Paul said to him in 1 Timothy 5.23 to drink a little bit of wine for his frequent ailments. So he's a bit prone to sickness. And then the other thing is his temperament, his natural temperament is he's timid. He's naturally shy and an introvert, 1 Corinthians 16.10. So, and then of course, Paul can remember perhaps when he parted company, he writes to him and he says, recalling your tears, and he says to him, you've not been given a spirit of cowardice, so don't recoil back. And then he says, the Lord has stood by Paul, he said, I've stood by me and strengthened me and rescued me. Now, this matter of fanning into flame, the gift which Timothy's been given, he's been given one a sincere faith, he's reminding him of Lois and Eunice, and he's also saying about his own ancestral background, Paul had been brought up in the faith, even though when he first heard the Messiah was Jesus, he didn't believe it. But when he came to see it, that faith lit up anew. He's to rekindle that, to go on being filled with the Spirit. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians to continue being filled anew with the Spirit. I remember one of our mentors, a senior man, saying before talking to a group of pastors one morning, he said, I was prayerful this morning for God's Spirit to be upon me because I had to come here and talk to all of you with it pastors, do you know? And he needed the Spirit of God to bring a fresh word that would be a benefit and blessing. And then he says the gift of God, he's a pastor, he's a teacher, and 2 Timothy 4.5 tells us he's an evangelist. Fanning to flame the gift of God. Paul knows what this is like, he says he's worked harder than all the other apostles, you'll find that in 1 Corinthians 15.10, but all of that was of grace, so Paul knows what it is to work hard, and not to be a coward, he knows that. But we'll see in my last talk at the end of the series is about Paul's huge need. When he says here, I long to see you, he's only got one person sticking with him at this point. That's Luke. Everybody else has flown the coop. They've gone. Some have deserted, some just can't hack the sufferings and so on, the difficulties, etc. But he wants Timothy to come and I'm looking forward to, in the last talk, just to share a little bit about what that coming was for. Now, he says to him, you have been given power, a spirit of power. The word of the cross is the power of God. That's what you're teaching people, which includes Christ's death and his resurrection and his ascension and his current reigning over everything and his incarnation and coming. But the word of the cross is the central matter. It's the power of God. Timothy's to communicate that. A spirit of love. You know, Paul says, if I've got all knowledge and understand everything, but haven't got love, I've got nothing. Just a noisy, loud gong banging away. So he said this is all to be communicated in love and self-control or self-discipline. And I've been greatly blessed in thinking through what it means to pass on the faith. You actually have to be a bit self-disciplined to pass the faith on to others. And I have just a realisation of some work yet to do in my ministry. I know people sometimes think I should leave some legacy or do something, but all of us need to, together, share in this passing on. And sometimes when you look and think, Yeah, heck, there's probably some more I could do. My grandfather used to pass on the faith to about, I think it was about 50 grandkids he had, but he bought us all a Bible when we were 15. And he, 15 or 16 might have been, I think I drove my car there. He said, come in, I've got something for you. And we thought, yep, I've just turned, you know, 16, this will be the Bible, sure enough. Grandpa sits us down, he said, yeah, you got these two to pick from, which one would you like? I picked the one with the pictures and thanked him very much. And I chucked that Bible up into the cupboard and didn't do anything with it for quite some time until I was in a stress and a mess. And what did I need to do? Mum said, well, you'll find out, Trevor, what love is if you read the Bible. And I said, I don't want to do that. But I was left with nothing but the gift my grandpa had given to me, a good brand new Bible that needed to be opened. And somehow, by the spirit of God, I opened that cupboard and dug up the back of that cupboard and got that Bible out. And my grandfather was involved, unbeknownst to him at that point, in passing on to me the faith, you know, to give. And so he gave everyone a Bible and a moment with grandpa Imagine if we all did that, hey? I mean, just the whole Christian church. passed on to their generation. Here, come and sit down. This is really important. And you know, yeah, all the kids said, yeah, thanks, Grandpa. Chucked it away. But there's an action there. There's a spirit-filled prayer there. There's a bit of an inscription on the inside. And when I read mine, I thought, gee, Grandpa knows more about me than I thought. And so it goes. Friends, this is what it's about, passing on the word. And there's a warning in this letter not to miss out as well. My last, I think I need to finish about now. I've forgotten. Huh? Okay. One of the things that I was really glad to do was we sent off Some people from our congregation said they've been called with CMS to go out in ministry to Ethiopia. And you know, the Ruby's, when they went to Ethiopia, we were privileged as a congregation to send them out. And we thought, well, wonderful. We're involved in another nation and taking the word there. Sometime after that, opportunity came not long after that to go and help teach some pastors in South Sudan where they're the poorest country and have been in 50 years of civil war and another opportunity to go to Liberia and share the word there and have a teaching time like this with pastors who haven't got a Bible. They're pastors and they don't own a Bible. They've learned of Christ and been believed on him but they're so poor they haven't got a Bible. To go and hand on to them some materials, take a bag full of books we did and give them a framework, a teaching framework of the whole of the Scriptures was a huge and a lovely and wonderful privilege. John Stott says this, he wanted Langham Place to have a ministry to the globe and he said this, 80% of pastors in the majority world lack any formal training. How about that? 80%. So somehow the faith's been passed on to them. But we've got the gear, you know, we've got the Bibles and the commentaries and the word studies and so on. And he says, we equip pastors around the world to preach God's word because this is how God changes lives and communicates and communities and while we were we had the privilege to go into these countries including Kenya and then I've had on my mind a long time, you know Somalia is one of the most lawless nations, one of the most unsafe places, but who's going to go there and take some words of encouragement and proclaim the word? And it's a wonderful thing when people take up this call and just say, hang on, I've got life and breath, let's continue to move out and to share and pass this faith on with all the gifts God has given to us, which can be the gifts of speech, but also the gift from our world of the ability to pass things on. So, that's my message I reckon. Paul is longing to see Timothy. He's a great friend. And if you are in jail for the sake of the gospel, sometimes you just want a human being who you can talk about all this important stuff to come and be with you. I think there may have been even greater things than that going on in this get-together. And he asked Timothy to leave, and it's going to be maybe three months before he gets there. Do your best to get here before the winter. So it's Paul requiring of someone, a great friend of his, to come and do something to help him in his lowly, suffering and difficult humanity, but not just because he's lonely and needs some company, because he's lonely and needs some company and still wants the gospel to reach a wider sphere of people. So how about that? I reckon I'm done. Let me close with a word of prayer, I think. Shall we pray? Dear Lord, as we give thanks today for the Apostle Paul, we also thank you for your servant Timothy, and we give you thanks for the way in which Timothy was such a blessing to the Apostle Paul. We pray that in like manner, Lord, you would take up our lives, fan them into flame afresh and anew, fill us anew with the burning love of the Holy Spirit, that the love of Christ may move in wonderful ways. Lord, may this gathering today be significant May this word burn in our hearts and may, Heavenly Father, may our nation, in all its stubbornness and Lord, with the ripples of atheism and all the difficult context, all religions are the same, that silly idea. Lord, we pray that the love of Christ would be made known here among our neighbours and friends as, Lord, there's a burning fire afresh in our hearts today for the Christ who so loved us on the cross. He bore our sins and rose from the grave with a word of freedom and peace and hope for all eternity. Lord, we worship you. And we remember your word that you are with us in these last days to the close of this age and in the age to come. Jesus, in your name we praise you. Amen.