I Am Mindful Of The Sincere Faith Within You

So this morning we're going to be talking about something that I think is an important topic for us. We're going to be continuing in our sermon, in our study of the book of 2 Timothy. We just started that last week. So we're going to be in chapter 1, verses 3 through 5. And our topic this morning, the thing we're going to be considering is children that grow up in church. If you have children and you're a Christian, of course you want your children to come to faith. And you want them to come to faith early in life. And you want them to lead faithful lives until the Lord calls them home. Now the topic of children in church and how we should view them, what we should think of them, what we should expect of them is something that has the potential to cause quite a bit of turmoil in churches. Should we assume that our children will come to faith? Should we presume upon God? Should we question whether they even need to come to faith? Or is it even a question? There are those who would wonder these things.

Or should we assume on the other end of the spectrum that their chances of loving God are really not all that different than children that have not been born into a Christian family or into the church? Is it really all the same? It can be a hard topic to work through. My goal this morning isn't to give you a plan for how to ensure your children will come to faith, though I know that's what all of us would like. I can't tell you if they will come to faith. And it follows that that I certainly can't tell you when they will come to faith. What I can tell you is that they need to come to faith and that God delights to bring our children to faith through our faith, the faith of parents and of grandparents. Our text, as I said, is 2 Timothy 1, verses 3-5. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? The Apostle Paul says this,

This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. The first thing I want to draw your attention to in this passage is that it's a very familial passage. Paul speaks to Timothy as a father speaks to his son. Paul speaks of himself having forefathers. And Paul attributes the faith that Timothy has to his mother and his grandmother. So we see in this passage that the way faith is handed down very commonly in God's economy is through the faith of parents. Even from the very beginning when God called Abraham out of darkness, what did he say to him? How would the blessings come to the nation? It would come to the nation.

as a family. He says, your family will be blessed. You will become a family. You will become a great nation. It's synonymous almost that the nation of Israel will be considered a family, a family of God. And so when Paul says, I serve God with a clear conscience the way my forefathers did, he's hearkening back. He's calling all the way back to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to David. These were his spiritual fathers. He saw himself as being joined to them, being the same as him. And they were his spiritual fathers, not simply his biological fathers. He wasn't simply a descendant of them. He wasn't just a Jew. There are many men we could recount in the Old Testament who Paul would not consider forefathers, who were unfaithful, who, though they were a part of Israel, were not Israel. In Romans 9, Paul says, It is not as though the word of God has failed, for they are not all Israel who descended from Israel.

And so when Paul speaks of his forefathers, serving them with a clear conscience, he joins himself to the faithful from past generations saying, these are my kin, these are my people. And the thing that bonds us and joins us together is that we loved God and that we served him. And I served them in the same way that Paul served them. Or that my, Paul says I served them in the same way that, served God in the same way they did. In another place in the New Testament, when Paul's speaking of Timothy, he says that Timothy is his son. Just in the verse right before this, he calls him his beloved son. In another place in 1 Corinthians, he talks about the people becoming his children through the gospel. And so the gospel is always spread through families. And sometimes those families are biological, and the faithfulness in those biological families is passed down. And sometimes it's God's will that that faith would be passed to people who are not our biological family, but become our family, our spiritual family, as Timothy did for Paul. But then Paul also mentions Timothy's mother and his grandmother, Lois and Eunice. And so from the beginning to the end of this passage, the first thing we can see is that God is pleased to pass faith on through the family. And so if you are a Christian and you have children,

It ought to be your expectation that God will use you to administer and to cultivate and to grow faith in your children. It's not something you ought to expect or want. You should not want them to go away from you, to go out into the world, to figure it out for themselves. I think that being an American has infected our understanding of how God works. We think that our children are to go away from us to learn who he is, when it's most natural that they would learn who he is. from us, that we would expect our children to know and to love and to serve God. And I'm not saying that to say that we ought to be presumptuous in our view of our children and saying, well, because I'm a Christian, you'll be a Christian. And there's nothing more about waiting and teaching to make that happen. We ought to expect that our children would learn the gospel and learn what it means to be, what to believe and how to live as a Christian from us.

Now, it is true that we need help and that the church is a great help to us in this work, but the church's job is not to replace you as parents. Maybe another way to say it is if you don't do your job, you're setting the church at a great disadvantage to be able to help you because your children live with you and see you day in and day out, how you live, what you love, what you do. And so faith does travel through families. And yet this isn't a guarantee. Probably most prominent in the scripture with regard to this not being a guarantee or a done deal is the story of Jacob and Esau. Esau was the oldest, right? And Esau had a blessing. He was set to inherit his father's fortunes, his inheritance. He was set to become his heir.

And yet what does the scripture tell us about Esau? It says that he sold his birthright, all of these things that were to be his, for a bowl of stew. Now, what did he sell for a bowl of stew? What did he forsake? What did he count as of no consequence because he was hungry? Was it just his physical inheritance? No. And I don't even think primarily that's what he sold. I think in the time when Esau says, I'm hungry, give me something to eat. What he was saying is all of the blessings and all of the kindnesses of God are of no consequence to me. My belly is my God. I'm hungry. I'll have what I desire. Give it to me now. In the same way that the prodigal son spoke to his father. Give me what's mine.

The difference between Esau and the prodigal son is that the prodigal returned where Esau, though he sought repentance, it says with tears he was not able to find it. Why? Because in another place, the scripture says that Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated. Now this is a great tension that we live in as parents. If we have children, we sacrifice for them and give for them, probably to a fault many times. to see that they have everything they could possibly need in this life. And my point in bringing that up is simply to say we understand that we want our children's good. We want them to have everything we can provide for them. It would be a shame to us if they were to take all of the instruction, all of the teaching, all of the blessing that we pour out on them, and if they were to forsake it and cast it aside, it would be an incredible grief to us. There have been people who've spoken of John Piper's son over these last...

month or two, and I've been reticent to bring it up because I don't know that it's always helpful for us to peer into the misery of other people. I think it's better for us to see their sorrow and to pray for them and to encourage them as we're able. Now, I don't have John Piper's email address, so I can't email him, neither do you. But you can understand the grief of his son rejecting everything that he's been taught. And then the questions swirl. Well, were John and Noelle faithful parents? Did they train him up? Is he qualified for ministry? And all these questions surround this work. And it's really an effort by us to reconcile the tension that we live in as Christian parents, knowing that our children will not become Christians. Faith will not be transferred to them. They will not believe unless God does it. And whatever circumstance they grow up in, there are Esau's. There are Absalom's. And it's a difficult thing. The older, I can tell you, the older your children get, the more apparent this reality becomes.

When they're little, they're happy to do the things that you tell them to do. Or maybe they're not happy to do the things that you tell them to do. But you don't think in terms of their souls yet. You think in terms of, you need to obey mommy and daddy. But there comes a time as they get older and you start to realize on the horizon that they're going to leave your house someday. That you will not have them forever. And that they're growing a will. They're being formed spiritually. And you want for them to be an object of God's love, as Jacob was, and not Esau, whom God hated. And so you live in this tension as a parent. Some of us say, well, I'd rather not live in that tension. And the way we skirt the issue or the tension is to say, well, God's going to do with them what God's going to do with them, as though we don't have any responsibility to them. And that's a failure. Another failure, equal, on the other side, is to say, I'm going to do everything I can. I'm going to make them Christians. They're going to believe. That's not in our power either.

Our children really do have to come to know Jesus Christ. They have to come to love him. They have to make their peace with him. God has to make his peace with them if there is to be peace. And so we bring children into this world. We raise them up. We discipline them. We instruct them, trusting that God would be merciful to them, praying and asking that God would be merciful to them, that he'd make up for our shortcomings and our failures as parents, our blind spots, the ways that we sin against them. It's a difficult thing raising children. And we can look in the pages of Scripture around us in our society throughout history and see that not all of God's people have faithful children. And so it's no guarantee, even as we study this passage and see Paul identifying with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, with Timothy, and Timothy with his mother and grandmother, that it's a given that their children will come to faith. And yet, while it's no guarantee, God has chosen family lines, I would say, to be the primary way

for faith to grow, for the kingdom of God to be built, for it to go forth and to spread. Here, Timothy's mother and grandmother are acknowledged by Paul as the primary ones who taught him. Now, who's conspicuous by their absence? His dad. Where's Timothy's dad? What do you know about Timothy's dad? Well, the scripture tells us in another place, in Acts 16, it says, Paul came to Derbe and to Lystra, and a disciple was there named Timothy, this Timothy. the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek. Now what does it mean that his father was a Greek? Well, it means that in contrast to his mother, he was not a believer. And so this tension that we've been talking about, that we live in and that our children have to grow up in, is the very tension that Timothy grew up in, with a believing mother and an unbelieving father. Who else is missing from this passage? I would say his grandfather.

His mother and his grandmother are cited as those who taught him to have a sincere faith, those who brought him up. And I want you to consider for a moment the hardship of his mother and his grandmother both being married to unbelievers, having to raise their children to fear God without their husband's leadership in this area. I think many of us would look at that situation and just be inclined to throw our hands up in the air and say, there's nothing that can be done. It's hopeless. Maybe we'd have more hope if it was backwards and the husband, the leader, the head was the one who believed and the wife wasn't. But what a difficult way to grow up. The tension. You learn something about these women and what they're like. In Acts 16, we find that Timothy's mother, Eunice, was a Jewish woman. And since she had a son, that made her a Jewish mother. Now, some of you might chuckle inside. Jewish mother.

Well, what's a Jewish mother? What is true of Jewish women? Are we free to say it? They're pushy. They're very, very pushy. They're not necessarily controlling. They're not afraid of danger for their children, but they're very pushy. They expect their children to behave a certain way and to do certain things. And what a kindness it was to Timothy that he had such mother and grandmother that loved and trusted God and taught him to do the same. Now it may be that his father was willing for him to have this instruction, to be taught the things of God. I suppose he could have been more opposed to this work. But we do know that Timothy's father was not willing for him to be marked as a Jew. Because when Paul in Acts 16 meets Timothy and says, this man, this disciple is a good man and I want to take him with him, what's the first thing he does with Timothy? He circumcises him. He marks him as one of God's people at the time.

Because he knew that he'd be ministering to Jews and everyone around knew that Timothy's father was not a Jew. And that Timothy was sort of this crossbreed hybrid, was he one of them or not? And so Paul resolves that tension by having Timothy circumcised. Because his father was unwilling for him to be marked as one of God's children. And so Timothy grew up in this tension, this conflict. And so one of the things we can see from this in terms of faith being passed on, I think in our circles where we talk about male headship and Feminine submission and deference and sort of things. I think we are in danger, perhaps, of discounting the impact of mothers on their children. We think, oh, well, mom doesn't have that much influence. It's all up to dad. And I say, no, not here, actually. In spite of having an unbelieving father, Timothy was of note as a disciple of Jesus Christ because of the faith of his mother.

Now it is generally true that children will follow their fathers, that dads do have a great impact on their children, especially their sons. But it's not always the case. I remember reading some studies one time that was talking about the likelihood of children to go to church, to be church attenders, based on the dynamics of their family. Whether mom and dad went to church, whether dad went to church, whether mom went to church, if one of them stayed home. Now obviously the best scenario is mom and dad both go to church and are faithful. Right? But then you come to the question of, what about when mom goes to church and dad doesn't? And you compare that to when dad goes to church but mom doesn't. Which group is far more likely to produce church-going children? When dad goes to church, right? And the subtext of that is that mothers don't have nearly the influence. This is what we learn from these sort of blanket statements, is that mothers don't have influence on their children the way fathers do. Now I'm going to say something that's going to be hard. Okay?

I don't think that's necessarily true. I think what has far more to do with that reality is the type of church that a single mom versus a single father would choose. I think that in our day, and with the churches in America that are aimed at and catered to the sensibilities of women and not men, I think that has far more to do with the likelihood of children coming to faith. The difficulty of having one parent believe and another parent not believe is incredibly difficult. And what is going to be necessary is that those who are living in such a situation choose a church that is going to help them through that tension. Being a single mom or having a husband that doesn't believe is very difficult. Eunice and Lois lived in such a situation, and yet they saw, too, their son, grandson's discipline.

And I would be remiss to tell you when I speak to young men about the condition of churches they've come from and the sort of discipleship that they've received, that it is woefully inadequate. The girls are left unprotected. They're left undisciplined. The way that they behave, the way that they act, the way that they carry themselves, the things that they prioritize just aren't spoken to. And if that work's not done in the family, how is the church supposed to pick up those pieces? The same with the son. When he wants to date and when he becomes aware, of the opposite sex, and faces temptations to pornography and the rest. Who's there to help him? Who's going to talk to him? On numerous occasions, I've worked with men who said, the church, that's just not something that we dealt with. They wouldn't deal with that. They didn't talk to me about my relationship with my girlfriend. They didn't talk about dating. They didn't talk about purity. It was just not something that was dealt with. One of the things I was very thankful for growing up, now you all know I didn't grow up in a Christian home. This whole talk is not, this is where I've come from.

I got into my 20s having never set foot in a church. The primary thing that I'm thankful for from my mom in growing up the way I did was that she never felt sorry for the fact that I didn't have a dad and she disciplined me. And I think she, in that way, though she's not a believer, and there's all kinds of tension in our relationship still to this day, the work that she did of teaching me that I was not a victim and that there was expectations and standards for me without a dad. was what prepared me to be able to hear the gospel and to believe it. And I think that's what Lois and Eunice did with Timothy. I don't think they felt sorry for him. Yes, he lived in tension. Yes, it was hard. Yes, his father wasn't a believer. But these women feared God. These women trusted God. They were those that God used to make Timothy, to form him and to shape him into a man that would be of great use to the Apostle Paul. And so they raised him.

to be a faithful man who demonstrated more than a simple ability to provide or to lead. They raised him to fear God and to trust him. And Timothy, even as a young man, demonstrated faith and maturity such that Paul wanted to take him with him, to train him and disciple him, and then to leave him at Ephesus and to pastor and to deal with all these unbelievers and all the wickedness and all the idolatry of Ephesus. Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Hey, Timothy, I want you to stay here and... make disciples. And so our children need, if we're to pass on our faith to them, our children need what Timothy received from his mothers and his grandmother. They need to learn to fear God and to not give in to their own temptations. This is how they will come to faith. Our children don't simply need intellectual or theological instruction. It is true that they need that, and it is generally true that in America that's something that's not popular in the church today.

We're not teaching our kids the theological truths that they need. But more importantly than that, we're not teaching them the significance of this stuff. To become a Christian is far more than a relationship. We need to teach our children to know God, to fear God. Galatians 3.24 says, the law has become our tutor that leads us to Christ. And so we as parents, when we tell our children no, You didn't do that well enough. No, what you said is not acceptable. No, you need to honor your mother. And they go, that's not hard. And they go to school and everyone says, well, your kids are the best behaved. But they come home and we go, no, no, no, it's not acceptable. You're going to be inclined to think that you're a jerk of a parent. You really will. You'll think you're mean and your kids will help you believe it. And they'll say, nobody else's parents do that. And you should look at them without flinching and say, well, that's a shame. If we want to see our faith.

passed on to our children the way that Eunice and Lois' faith was passed on to Timothy, then we have to teach our children to fear God. And I'm using the word fear instead of the word trust or believe in God because fear is the thing that they will not get anywhere else. The only thing Americans are afraid of is losing our money. It's all we're afraid of. It's the only thing that motivates us to do something. Now, are there other things in Christians that motivate them? Yes. But I'm saying in the aggregate, generally speaking, the pot that we all are simmering in, the only thing we fear is losing our comforts. But God doesn't fear us losing our comforts. And so if you want your children to come to faith, you have to teach them about the nature and character of God. And you need to teach them that he's in consuming fire. And the fact that they are your children does not somehow insulate them.

from his wrath against their sins. And you'll be fighting an uphill battle, but it's absolutely essential that we do this work. We want the sort of children that are able to live in the tension of being a Christian in a godless or wicked society. Barring the kindness of God and turning this ship around in America, our children will face very difficult times. And so we as parents need to be able to look and go, okay, hard times are coming for them. We need to prepare them for those times. And I don't want what I'm saying to be lost on you in such a way that you say, oh, hard times. What I'm saying is you're going to prepare your children, if you're a faithful parent, you're going to prepare them to suffer as Christians. That's going to be your primary job is to teach them to be willing to suffer and to trust God and to give up their comforts and their ease, even as the people around them are receiving those comforts because they've forsaken God. This is what we're teaching our children or need to be teaching our children.

In 1 Timothy 4, Timothy was a young man, and so Paul writes to him, let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe. He was not telling Timothy, you're preaching to the choir, and everyone around you is going to be doing the same thing, and so it'll be comfortable and easy and familiar to you. No. He said, don't let anyone dismiss you because you're young, but show yourself an example of those who believe. And a necessary part of that or outworking of that, whether you intend it to be or not, is that those who have rejected these truths will be put to shame by them and will become angry as a result. And so we have to teach our children to be willing to bear up under that shame and that reproach. If they suffer in those ways for Jesus Christ, then thanks be to God. May it never be that we as their parents are the ones that are keeping them from serving God faithfully because we don't want them to have to suffer.

Last week when we talked about Paul and his ministry as an apostle, you remember what God said to Ananias. I'm going to show Paul how much he's going to have to suffer for my namesake. Is it any different for Timothy? Is it any different for our children? Isn't our work as parents to teach and to equip our children to be able to suffer for Jesus Christ and to do it without remorse? Both by our example and by our words, we're to instruct them. So that when their difficult times come and when sorrow comes and when their jobs are on the line, they say, my mind is captive and my conscience is captive to the word of God. Just as Luther did. Unless you can show me by clear reason or from the scriptures, I'm bound. This is what Lois and Eunice prepared Timothy to become.

And it is true that as you raise your children, the fruit that you want to see and the seeds that you plant, you will not see for a while. This is not a short endeavor. This is not the sort of thing that has a quick turnaround. You've been given children for a period of time. They'll live in your house for 18 or 20 years or something like that, and then they're going to go out on their own, and your influence will change. It changes even before they leave your house if you're preparing them to be able to care for themselves. and Lord willing, other people. We have a short time with our children and we ought to make the most of it because the days are evil. And so the seeds that we sow in them are seeds that we want to see bearing fruit, not just while they're in our homes. In fact, I would say to you as parents that you shouldn't be willing to endure the hardship of training your children without seeing the good fruit of what you're training them because your expectations are so high. I don't think many of us are in danger of expecting too much of our children.

I'm certainly not. I'm ready, as I think many of you are, to say, well, it's good enough. Well, they're doing well. And I'm not saying you should be a legalistic, cold, distant parent who's never satisfied or loves their children. That's not what I'm saying you should be. What I am saying, though, is you should never be satisfied with your children's obedience if there's still room for them to grow. And by satisfied, I mean content to have them grow no more. In our lives as Christians, God doesn't ever say to us, you've done well enough now and you don't have to grow anymore. Here's a season of no work for you. Here's your Sabbath. We will have a Sabbath. We will have rest. We will set down our work someday in this earth. And we will hear, well done, good and faithful slave. Enter into the joy of your master. We will hear that someday. But until that day, how does the Lord deal with us?

He shapes us and prunes us, allows us to be afflicted until we all want to cry out, I quit. I've had enough. No more. And even when we get backed into a corner and cagey and angry and frustrated, even then the Lord doesn't relent and say, oh, I can see. He gives us grace to be able to endure it, to bear up underneath it. Though, at the time, it doesn't feel like that. I think one of the sweetest things that Paul says about Timothy here is, how he describes Timothy's faith. He says it's a sincere faith. And I think this is one of the greatest commendations that a church kid can hear. And the reason is because the temptation to hypocrisy is so common. To behave one way while people are watching or while you're at church and to behave or to speak in a completely different way when you're left to yourself. Timothy having a sincere faith means that he was not performing.

He didn't hear the apostle was coming to town and brush up on his theology. He really did believe. And he lived like he believed. For a time, hypocrisy can be hidden, even in church kids. They grow up and they come around and they recite their Bible verses and they come to Awana and they learn to pray. And they learn all the things they're supposed to do. While at the same time facing a growing temptation to forsake those things and to go after the world, to pursue the world. And so in time, their hypocrisy is exposed. It's seen. It comes to light. They throw off the constraints of Jesus Christ and they say, I'll live for myself and I'll do what I please. And so what we want is our children to have a sincere faith, knowing that that's something that they're going to have to fight for and we're going to have to fight for. Teaching them and training them and disciplining them and praying for them, that they would have a sincere faith, not a superficial faith.

not a faith that when it faces adversity, whether at school or in the workplace, where they say, the Bible doesn't have an answer for that. I don't know what to do with this suffering. So I have two applications, pretty straightforward and pretty simple. If I asked you what they were, you'd probably be able to tell me. The first is to the children of the church. Your children need to be like Timothy, okay? Timothy didn't have perfect parents. Certainly didn't have a perfect father. His father wasn't even a believer. But if you're here today, you're here because your parents have brought you. And they've brought you to a church that loves and fears God and wants to teach you to do the same. And when the day comes where you have to make your own decisions and your parents are no longer able to control you or no longer able to cover for you or make excuses for you or hide your sins, what you love will become evident. And so if your parents have brought you here and they're training you up, receive their instruction and their teaching.

Even as they sin, your parents are not perfect. They sin against you in all kinds of ways. And the fact that your parents sin is no excuse for your rebellion. In the day that you stand before God and give an account, you're not going to be able to say, well, my mommy and my daddy argued. My mommy and my daddy wouldn't let me listen to this kind of music or play with this friend or date or whatever it is they've said no to. When your parents fail, they sin against you. And you ought not to be surprised by that. We all sin against each other. But their sins don't make your sins any less wicked. And you have obligation, particularly as a Christian child, to come to faith and to love and to serve God. You are not the same as kids that have never been to church. You're not the same as me growing up. Because you've been given things that unbelieving children have not.

And it's for you to pursue those things and to turn a profit with those things and to give them back to Jesus, having been improved by your care. And so if you reject God or you hide your sins, your faith will not be sincere the way Timothy's is. And it will not support you through the many temptations that you'll face in your life. You'll be as the man that we read about in Isaiah who couldn't look at the wood and say, I've grown this tree so I would have firewood and how foolish have I been to think that this would save me in my time of trouble. And second, to the parents, be like Lois and Eunice. Even if you're a man, be like Lois and Eunice. It's a joy and a kindness of God to have mothers in Israel who teach us and who train us and who expect things of us and don't accept less than what they expect.

These women faced many hardships in their lives, we can presume. And through all of them, they trusted God and taught Timothy to do the same. As parents, don't make excuse for your failures. If you fail, if you sin, confess your sins to your children and tell them, I'm sorry, Mommy sinned. I'm sorry, Daddy sinned. I shouldn't have said that, and here's what happened. and would you please forgive me, but don't make excuses for your sins. Your children don't need to know that you're stressed out, and they don't need to know that you're worried, and the fact that you're sick or tired or whatever burdens you're facing, which are very real, they don't exempt you from the work of raising your children the way Lois and Eunice raised theirs. And so when you fail as a parent, don't throw your hands up in despair. Rather, repent, confess your sins to your children, ask them to forgive you, and teach them that they serve a God, you serve a God,

that delights in repentance and in forgiveness and in living by faith because we're not perfect. Let's pray.