Guarding the Gospel

Can I invite you to turn with me to 1 Timothy chapter 6? And as you find that passage of Scripture there, the final two verses, we’re going to pause just for a moment and ask God to help us as we study the Bible together. First Timothy 6:20.

Father, take my words and speak through them. Take our minds and help us to think. Take our hearts and bring them to conviction, and renewed conviction, about Christ and about the gospel and about Christian service and about our place in history. For Jesus’ sake we ask it. Amen.

Now let me read verse 20 and 21:

“Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith. Grace be with you.”

Now, it is clear not only from this but also from the opening section of this letter that Paul’s preoccupation, if you like, purposefully throughout the letter has been with this problem of false teaching, and specifically these false teachers. If you turn back a couple of pages to the opening verses of the letter, you will be reminded, for example, in verse 6 that he is concerned about those who have wandered away from “a pure heart” and from “a good conscience and a sincere faith,” and having wandered from these three essentials, they have “turned” aside “to meaningless talk.”[1]

Now, in relationship to that, he has provided all kinds of instruction for the church. He left Timothy in Ephesus, we’re told, in order that he might essentially straighten out the mess that was there and prevent further mess from taking place.[2] And he provided all manner of instruction in relationship to the way in which people should conduct themselves within the household of faith.[3] And now, as he puts his pen to the end of the letter, he has, if you like, come full circle here, and these final verses essentially summarize the thrust of his instruction: Timothy is to guard what has been entrusted to him, he says; he mustn’t be drawn away by the teachers of so-called knowledge; and he must do his best to stop this pervasive influence from having any kind of inroad in the church at all.

Now, in doing this, Paul is providing Timothy with instruction in relationship to that which he has been prepared to do himself. The letter is an endearing letter; it is a personal letter. It is not that what we have here is a book, as it were, written from some academic reach, disbursed out into the corridors of ecclesiastical orthodoxy, picked up by Timothy, and discovered from there and applied. It’s not that at all. The picture that we should have throughout all of this is a picture of endearment and of concern and of an individual urging upon this young man the fulfillment of his calling, and particularly his willingness to take a stand, as Paul has done in numerous ways alongside him.

For example—and I will give you only one cross-reference: Galatians chapter 2. Paul, in talking of the fact that false brothers had infiltrated the ranks of the church in order to spy on their freedom—the freedom that they have in the Lord Jesus Christ—and to try and make them slaves, he says in relationship to this in verse 5, “We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you.” “We did not give in to them for a moment.” Why? “Because we wanted simply to make our point”? No, “Because we recognized that the reaction that we had in that moment in time was going to have an impact not only for its immediacy but also for all who would then follow in the line of the church.”

Our ability to take seriously what God says about his truth in our day and in our generation has ramifications for those yet unborn.

And that is his great concern as he writes these pastoral letters to Timothy. He wants Timothy and those who will follow him to understand that their and our ability to take seriously what God says about his truth in our day and in our generation has ramifications for those yet unborn—that the children that I am exhorting us to take care of in these next months, these tiny little ones, will twenty years from now be twenty and twenty-one. They will be thinking of their careers, they will be taking their place in society, they will be marrying, and they will be given away in marriage. And what will they believe? And what will they know? And what will they be able to die for or to care about, 2016, 2020, if Christ does not return? “Timothy! Timothy, I want you to make sure that the truth of the gospel, your life, your calling, your ministry, your faith is lived out in relationship to this overwhelming thought.”

Now, I’d like to gather our instruction around four words—two of which appear in the text, and two are inferences from it—and turn them all into imperatives.

Guarding the Gospel

First of all, in verse 20, the second word, if you’re using the NIV, is the word “guard.” “Guard.”

If you have a King James Version, you have an advantage, because your version will begin with “O.” Your version reads, “O Timothy.” And that is an important “O,” because it conveys something of the earnestness which is the whole tenor of the letter. It is the kind of O that a grandfather has when he has the privilege of his granddaughter or his grandson around him, and they’re just alone, and he says to them, “Oooh!” It’s the O of a mother: “Oooh,” she says, and then she adds the name, but it comes out of somewhere deep inside of her. It’s not “Oh.” It’s not “Oh?” It’s not “Oh-oh.” It’s “Oooh!” It’s one of those Os. And if miss that “O,” you miss a lot. Because without the “O,” you may think he’s simply saying, “Now, Timothy, I want you to guard what is entrusted to you.” See? It’s not that at all. It’s blood, sweat, and tears. It’s “Timothy, man, I love you. Timothy, I’m passionately committed to you. Timothy, in one sense, under God, the future hangs on you. O Timothy!”

Now, Timothy’s listening, you see. He’s already described him in 1:18. He says, “O Timothy, my son in the faith.”[4] This is not arm’s-length stuff. This is not cerebral. This is visceral. This is passion. This is the seasoned campaigner with the young soldier at his arm. This is the doctor with gray hair with the young intern at her side.

I walked behind a gentleman yesterday who, by dint of his calling, has young men in his tutelage. And I walked about 150 yards behind this scene, and it struck me so forcibly. Here on the right-hand side: all of the experience, all of the maturity, all of the wisdom, all of the ability. Here on the left-hand side: all of the dreams, all of the longings, all of the aspirations. And I looked at it, and I said, “I hope that young man understands what a privilege it is to be walking at the shoulder of this man. And I hope he isn’t proud, and I hope he isn’t smug, and I hope he doesn’t think he knows everything. Because if he has a humble heart, if he has a gentle spirit, then he will turn back on that scene in years to come, and he will say, “Walking at that man’s side marked my life.”

And incidentally, that is what is supposed to happen in ministry—in all ministry. Yes, there is a unique privilege and responsibility that is entrusted to someone as a teaching elder in the fulfillment of the function here, and one absolutely underpins its absolute centrality and essentialness in relationship to our church. But do not mistake me when I tell you this: that the real impact of the gospel from here is going to be discovered tinkering underneath the hoods of cars, and in the folding and unfolding of laundry, and in the doing of algebra together, and in gardens, and in golf courses, and in all sorts of strange places as we walk together and touch the lives of those whom God has put within our sphere of influence.

Now, it is this kind of dimension that is here in this text as Paul says, “Now, Timothy, come on. I want you to guard this.” It’s the same word as you find, incidentally, if your Bible is open, in 2 Timothy 1:14: “Guard the good deposit.” It’s an obvious word. It’s the word that the groom says to the best man when he gives him the rings. I always ask the question, “Who has the rings?” I don’t like it when they both look at one another. That is a disconcerting moment. It’s the same moment as you say, “Who has the license?” and they’re going… It’s not a good—it’s a solemn moment. But I always tell the joker, I say, “Look, take the ring and…” (Too much golf. I’m missing my wedding ring. Just suddenly noticed.) “Take the ring and… Take the ring and put it on your little finger. Put both the rings on your wee finger.” “Oh, I don’t need to do that. I like to keep them in the leather thing.” I say, “Look, cloth-ears, do as I’m telling you. Put it on your little finger. Because when I say, ‘The rings,’ I want the rings. I don’t want any nonsense. I don’t want footering around in your pockets—none of that stuff. ‘Rings’: rings. We are giving them to you. We are entrusting them to your care. When we ask for them, we want them. Do you understand that? Do it.”

Now, that’s the same word here for “guard.” God has, if you like, put a deposit in Timothy. He has deposited with Timothy: “Now, Timothy, you look after that. When God asks about it, you better be able to produce it instantaneously and intact—not mettled with, not fooled with, not dressed up, not diminished; intact.”

Now, this already leads me to my explanation as to what it is that he is to guard. The commentators differ. Some say that the guarding here is of Timothy’s own spiritual life. Someone else will say, “No, it is the guarding of his call to the ministry.” Others say that it is the guarding of the apostolic teaching—it is the guarding of the gospel.

Now, let me say two things concerning this. First of all, it is virtually impossible to disengage those three elements. Because Timothy obviously is to guard his walk with Christ. His walk with Christ is directly involved with the fact that he has been called to the ministry of pastoring. And what is the ministry of a pastor but a ministry of the gospel? So to split hairs over what exactly it is I’m not sure is particularly profitable.

But if I have to choose, then I choose the third: that he is being encouraged to guard the apostolic truth which he has received from the instruction of his grandmother and from his mother and now at the hand of Paul.[5] The reason I say that is because the immediate context contrasts what has been entrusted to his care with the “godless chatter and the opposing ideas” of the false teachers. That antithesis doesn’t work in relationship to his Christian life or in relationship to his call to the gospel ministry. The antithesis is workable in relationship to the fact that here we have the gospel, and here we have opposing ideas of knowledge. “So you guard this, because you’re in the middle of this.”

Now, obviously, he has to watch his life and his doctrine closely. He said that in 1 Timothy 4:16. So the whole thing is interwoven. But I do think that we will be helped by thinking in terms of the redemptive truth of the gospel in its widest sense. While there is a uniqueness to Timothy’s call, and he must pay careful attention to that, the implication, the application, of this directive is not ending with Timothy, but it is also a charge to all who are under Timothy’s care, all the readers of Timothy’s letter, and therefore all of us who—according to verse 19 in the ending phrase—all of us who have “take[n] hold of the life that is truly life.”

So in other words, nobody should sit back and say, “Well, somebody else will take care of that for me. That’s obviously some kind of pastoral thing. This is, after all, a letter to somebody who was a pastor. Therefore, I’ll just let the others take care of guarding this.” No, you need to understand that it is imperative that you play your part in guarding it. We didn’t sing all of the hymn, but if we had, then we would have used the words

We bear the torch that flaming
Fell from the hands of those
Who gave their lives proclaiming
That Jesus died and rose.[6]

And the picture is of that Olympic torch as it makes its way all across Europe, and it is passed safely from hand to hand to hand until finally, in that great ceremony, it is fanned into a spectacular blaze.

I’m not sure that I fully appreciate, nor am I sure that as a church in our day we fully appreciate, the way in which the battle lines are being drawn at this time in relationship to the issues of the gospel. And we will never be able to guard the gospel unless we know the gospel. And therefore, it is incumbent upon those of us as parents, those of us as Bible class leaders, those of us as instructors in every area of our church’s life, not least of all in pastoral responsibility, to ensure that those under our care know the gospel—that they know the difference between an approach which sells the gospel as a commodity, which goes to people and says, essentially, “Would you like to have Jesus in your life?”

We will never be able to guard the gospel unless we know the gospel.

The person says, “Well, exactly why do you have this in mind?”

“Well, I mean are you interested in joy?”

“Oh, yeah, I like to be happy.”

“What about peace?”

“I like peace.”

“Direction?”

“I’m a purposeful sort of person.”

“Fulfillment?”

“I like fulfillment. Oh, I see. So if I just, where I am right now, want joy and peace and direction and fulfillment, I have Jesus in my life. Is that it?”

“Yes,” says the person. They think they’re doing a great job on the gospel now. They think they’re explaining it very well.

The person says, “Well, what are you supposed to do?”

“Well, you have to believe.”

Well, the person says, “Well, what do you have to believe?”

“We have to believe that Jesus is God’s Son.”

“Well, I already believe that Jesus is God’s Son.”

Now, at this point, the person’s getting in deep difficulty if they don’t know the gospel. Because by their definition, this person is actually a Christian already, you see? Because they want joy, peace, fulfillment, and everything; they’re happy to get it from Jesus Christ; you’re supposed to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and they already believe that. So the thing is a total dog’s breakfast. And they don’t know where to go from there.

They tell the person to make a commitment. The person makes a commitment. They don’t know what it means. They don’t really know what they’re committing to. They come at the end of a service. Everybody gets them hyped up and has them make a commitment. And three months later, it’s clear they’ve made a commitment, but they were never converted. And they were never converted ’cause they never heard the gospel. No one ever told them that the problem in their life was that they were alienated from God; they were in bondage to themselves because of their sin; they were in conflict with other people and they were in conflict with themselves because they were inalienably distanced from God on account of sin—irrespective of whether they wanted joy, peace, fulfillment, direction, and all those other things; irrespective of whether they liked the idea of Jesus Christ being added to their life as if it was sort of this special religious package, like Pepsi-Cola or something.

Why would anybody want a Savior unless the person was a sinner? I mean, do you remember I told you that story years ago about how they woke me up about five o’clock in the morning in Bainbridge, and they came to rescue me? The beating on the door like crazy? I come down the stairs, and I open the door; they’ve got the whole Bainbridge paramedic thing, all the fire brigades, police, and everything all up Plum Creek Trail. And the guy says, “I came to save you.” Seriously! And I said, “From what?” And they were at the wrong house! But it would have been different if a chip pan had gone on fire, and we were all burning to death in the back. We’d have been running out the door. So our friends are going, “From what?”

Now, I hope that you… I don’t think I’m making light of this. This is so pressingly important. We wouldn’t let plumbers or electricians work in our home if they were as clueless about their craft as many of us are about the gospel.

“Well, what are you going to do with those pipes?”

“Well, you know, I haven’t really decided. I was thinking, you know, maybe stick one up here, and a curl one over there, and do you fancy one up there?”

“Search me! I don’t know! What do you with all those wires?”

“I was just standing asking myself the same question. Look at this mess, man. What is this?”

You’d be going, “Out of here! Get out of here!”

That’s still what some of us are with the gospel: “Oh, I don’t know. I’m not sure. I think, perhaps, maybe,” and so on.” It’s imperative that we know the gospel. If you don’t know it, you can’t guard it. And you won’t be able to guard it from error. You won’t know when somebody is telling something that isn’t the gospel, because you don’t know what the gospel is. It’s like if you don’t know what the currency is, you might be prepared to take on a few three-dollar bills.

Avoiding Godless Chatter

“Guard it.” Now, how are we going to guard it? Well, he says if you’re going to “guard what has been entrusted to your care,” it is imperative that you “turn away from godless chatter.”

Now, this is very, very important. Instead of getting caught up in refuting all the inane nonsense of these false teachers, Timothy is simply to shun them. The folks, many of them do not understand the words that they are using. They don’t understand the themes they are propounding. They speak with great volume, with many words, with unsurpassed confidence, and yet it’s twaddle. So he is not to guard the gospel by refuting all these ramblings, because if he thinks about it for a moment or two, there is nothing in the ramblings that is worthy of being refuted.

Some people have turned their pulpits into a soapbox from which to simply refute all the ramblings of the day. Now, it is imperative that we point out from our culture where error is obvious, where there is danger lurking. That’s what it is to be a shepherd. But I mean at the expense of actually saying what the Bible says. I mean starting always with, “You know what I found out the other day? I found out that somebody was saying this, and they were saying that. Now, let me tell you why all this is wrong. Let me tell you why all this is wrong. Let me tell you all why all this is wrong.” And the person says, “Okay, we understand all that. But what about something that is right for once? How about something that is instructive?”

To engage these false teachers in dialogue is to confer on them an honor as if they were saying something that was worthwhile and that we could realistically consider. Every question doesn’t deserve an answer. True? Okay, let me address that simply to the schoolteachers, and I know I’ll get a “True.” Poor schoolteachers! Spend their lives with the most bizarre questions. And college professors, they think they’ve got the cream of the crop in there; they ask really dumb stuff. I remember in a New Testament class in Christology with a guy called Professor Jackson, in the midst of this great exposé of the nature of Christ as it had to do with Pauline theology, some bright spark in the class puts up his hand and interrupts him. He says, “Professor Jackson, could you tell me how Paul traveled?” And I’ll never forget it. He just looked through his wire rims. He stopped. He said, “Sometimes he traveled on a donkey, and sometimes he did not travel on a donkey.” And he said, “Now, getting back to the Christology of Paul…” I mean, everybody was like, “Where in the…”

But you don’t have to be in pastoral ministry for more than five minutes, and they’ll come at you, like flies round a pot of honey. I like to answer questions, but I mean, I can pick you out from a hundred and fifty yards—the Levitical boys, I call them. You know, they say, “Excuse me, I have a question here about Leviticus 11: ‘Of the animals that move about on the ground, these are [the] unclean for you: the weasel, the rat, [and] any kind of great lizard, the gecko, the monitor lizard, the wall lizard, the skink and the chameleon.’[7] Now, pastor, could you tell me if…” And you’re like, “Hey, just get out of my life, would you please?” You know, just “Don’t you have a place to go? I mean, do you have anything you can do?” You say, “You’re not a very nice person.” You got it! But you come and ask me how you can meet Christ, I’ll meet you anywhere you want to meet me. You ask me how you can put and repair and mend, fix—that’s good. But not every question’s worth an answer. Not every notion is worthy of dialogue.

Paul makes it clear. John, the disciple of love, says in 2 John 10—and he was a loving guy—he says, “If anyone comes to you and does[n’t] bring [the] teaching”—the orthodox teaching that is Trinitarian—“do not take him into your house or welcome him. [Because] anyone who welcomes him shares in his [evil] work.”

Now, loved ones, you got to learn in this day of dialogue to know when just to turn—when to know that this is going to lead to controversy, it’s going to lead to confusion, it’s going to be unhelpful. Because a feature of all cultish activity is that it has alongside the Bible, as is true here, “godless chatter” and stuff that is “falsely called knowledge.” So, for example, you go down the high street, and you find this lovely shop with beautiful lighting, and there, right in the plateglass window, is a copy of the Bible. “My, my,” you say to yourself, “you don’t see that very much these days. Look at that, on a lovely easel: the Bible. What nice people they must be in there, and how concerned they must be about the gospel. Put the Bible up right in the window! There can’t possibly be anything wrong with them, can there?”

Yes. Because they have another book sitting right beside the Bible. And the book that’s sitting beside the Bible is the key to understanding the Bible. It is full of falsely contrived knowledge. And they will tell you that you can’t make head nor tail of this book, the Bible, unless you get into this book written by Mary Baker Eddy. That’s why when you travel in the Marriott Hotel, in the one drawer and then the other drawer, or sometimes in both drawers, you have the Book of Mormon, and you have the King James Version Bible. Why? Because all of this falsely called knowledge from the Book of Moroni is supposed to explain our Bibles.

Now, what do you want to do? Spend the rest of your time dialoguing that? I like the Bible Answer Man, but the Bible Answer Man is not the key to the future of the church, let me tell you. Because when you’ve answered every sinner’s question, they may not be one step closer to faith, because only God grants faith. And he did not give us the gospel as an apologetic to argue people into the kingdom. The apologetic simply creates a crisis in the worldview of those who are thinking about these matters. But it is insufficient in itself, as if somehow or another we could dialogue people into the kingdom.

And those of you who have, to quote Dick Lucas, a size-twelve brain, have a peculiar proclivity for this kind of thing, because you’re the kind of individual that wants to turn up every stone and look underneath it. If you’re a bit of a dimwit like me, you don’t have to worry about that. You’re the kind of person that when PBS does a thing on the person of Jesus Christ, you watch it for six hours, despite for the fact that it is six hours of total drivel. And it gets you all churned up and upset, and then you have to try and go and answer every question that has been raised by these babblers and these false teachers with all their so-called incontrovertible evidence.

When you’ve answered every sinner’s question, they may not be one step closer to faith, because only God grants faith. And he did not give us the gospel as an apologetic to argue people into the kingdom.

Why not be dumb like me? Just don’t watch it. Do you really think you’re going to find out something you need to know, to listen to the ramblings of the pagans, who have already started from a presupposition that is totally antibiblical, that is totally anti-God, that doesn’t believe a single thing about Jesus Christ? And every hour spent doing that is one hour absent from McDonald’s, when you can meet people who need the Lord and will be prepared to talk to you about all kinds of things if you can look them in the eye, be kind and gentle in your approach.

So, for those of you who are knowledgeable chaps, I think you need to learn with me the great verse of the Old Testament which I use every so often. I hope none of you have had a letter from me with this verse. (I hope none of you have. I don’t think any of you have.) But I do use this from time to time. It’s a kind of my-last-resort verse. Nehemiah 6:8. It’s a great verse. When they were accusing Nehemiah of all kinds of things, he sent them this reply: “Nothing like what you[’re] saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.” It’s a great verse! They say, “Well, we want to come in and see you and talk to you about the problem with the such-and-such and the so-and-so and the hows and the thing and the ho-ho and then the so-ho.” Say, “You know what? Nothing like what you’re saying is happening. You are just making it up out of your head. Now, excuse me; I’m trying to build a wall here. Thank you.”

That’s the emphasis here in 1 Timothy: “Timothy, Timothy, guard this. If you’re going to guard it, you need to proclaim it. You need to know it. You need to be passionate about it. And you don’t need to fall into the trap of thinking that all this inane babbling that is going on here in the background while you are seeking to tell others the good news of Jesus Christ is such that you should turn aside and try and fix it and try and deal with it and try and sort this and that out. You’ll never do it!”

“Ah,” you say, “but, you know, that was Timothy. He was young. He had a problem with his stomach. He was diffident. He’s not like me, you know.” Yeah. What about Saul of Tarsus? Paul comes into Corinth. He is an intellect by any standards. He said, “When I came to you, I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. People wanted eloquent wisdom, they wanted dialogue, they wanted all these things. I didn’t give it to them. There was another group over here, and they wanted miraculous signs, and they wanted drama, and I didn’t give that to them. All I gave to them was the story of a Galilean carpenter and his atoning death upon the cross.”[8]

Can I tell you something? That is all we have to give to people. That’s it. That’s the whole deal. And that’s why many of us are ashamed. That’s why we never get there. And if you don’t get there, you don’t get to the place where God keeps all of his appointments with men and women. See, God doesn’t keep his appointments with men and women over here in their quest for fulfillment. He keeps all of his appointments with men and women at a cross.

Considering the Wanderers

“Timothy, guard this. Shun this.” Now, just notice: “Consider this.” Consider is my third verb, which I’m inserting. Where from? Well, look: he is describing this circumstance in verse 21. He says there is this falsely called knowledge, “which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith.” Consider the fact that they began in a certain way, and they have wandered off track. They are professors who have missed the mark. They’re the kind of individuals who were intensely interested. They had to know everything.

In twenty-three years of pastoral ministry, I’ve seen these people again and again. They are dear souls, but they will never take a simple explanation. If you give them a simple explanation, they think that you’re trying to fob them off. You’re not! You’re trying to help them.

Like Hogan, the great golfer, when somebody comes to him—an amateur golfer—and he says, “Mr. Hogan, how do I get my ball to spin back when it hits the green and spin back to the pin?”

And Hogan says to him, “Just hit down hard on it.”

“Oh no,” says the man, “that’s too simple an explanation. It can’t be as simple as that. There must be a key. There must be something that you’re keeping back from me.”

And Hogan, who didn’t tolerate fools gladly, turned to the guy, and he said, “Let me ask you a question: When you hit an approach shot to the green, how many times does your ball go past the pin?”

“Oh,” said the man, “it never does.”

“Then,” said Hogan, “why do you need to learn about backspin then?”

And it’s the same thing: people getting themselves all turned up about all manner of things. They’re zealous, they debate the details, they argue over the incidentals, and before long they have lost sight of the fact that they were ever aiming for a target at all. They failed to pursue godliness. They began to embrace stupid ideas. They filled their heads with knowledge. They were no longer involved in evangelism. And you say, “Well, of course, that would never happen here.” Listen, it happens everywhere. Everywhere.

Some of you may want to close your Bibles just at this point when I mention this, just in case the person next to you sees it, but I have an observation about people who underline their Bibles in multiple colors. Most of the people that I have found who went totally off the track have multiple-colored underlined Bibles. That’s just an observation. And they had a wheelbarrow that contained a large loose-leaf binder, which was the key to reminding them why they had underlined things in a certain color in the first place.

He said, “Look, the main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things.” “Oh no, no, no, no!” they said. “No, no! You don’t understand! You don’t understand that the messianic rule and the reign, if you take that, multiply it by six, divide it by two, take away the number you first thought of, will bring you to Ezekiel 27, which you will see I have in my multicolored section, which relates directly to Revelation 9,” and so on. He’s just going, “Oh man. This is over. This is absolutely over.” I get about one a month like this—dear, zealous folks. And I want to say, “Guys, just guard the clear gospel of Jesus Christ. Shun all the babblings and the inanities.”

Don’t be unkind. I don’t want to be unkind in saying this. I don’t want to be dismissive. But I care passionately, ’cause this is my concern. It’s the same concern with Paul. It is: Will there be a generation come behind us that understand the gospel? Will there be a generation that grows up behind us that lives for Jesus Christ? Will there be young people that stand up, and know the Book, and love the Book, and love Christ, and are passionate, and when they sing, “Breathe on me, Breath of God,”[9] they mean that? And that they will impact their generation for Christ? Will there? I tell you, it will not come from any other department than from the department of the tutelage of God’s Word—learning to know it and to guard it and to shun it and to observe it and to rest.

Resting in Grace

It’s my last word: rest. ’Cause you take all of this, and you say, “How in the world am I going to be able to do that? I’ve got to guard this. I’ve got to turn from that. I’ve got to consider what has happened to these dear souls.” “Well,” he says, “I want you to rest in the grace that is within you.”

You see, do not be deceived. In the church in every generation, there will arise those, wolves in sheep’s clothing, seeking to drag away people after them. That’s what the word was to Ephesus, wasn’t it? That’s Acts chapter 20. It’s the very same church context. Paul says to the Ephesian elders on the beach, he says, “I want you to guard yourselves and guard your lives and guard your doctrine and look after things here, because after I leave you, there will arise from within people who will seek to draw away folks after them.”[10]

And what will they do? They will take the Bible, and they will say, “You know what? Nobody here can understand it. You can only understand it if you listen to me. If you listen to me, I will tell you about the key to it. The key to it is a special knowledge. I have the special knowledge. If you would come to my house three times a month for the next six months, I think you could get the special knowledge as well.” “Oh, I’d like that knowledge.” Before you know where you are, you have a small cluster gathered around this esoteric interest which is “the key” to this book.

Paul says, “Look out, it’s going to happen.” I’m telling you, it does happen. I have watched it happen in the fifteen years that I have been here. And it continues to happen, and it will happen again next week. And anybody who is naive to that is not reading the Bible and paying attention. That’s why pastors are “shepherds.” That’s why sheep have to be rescued, but they also need a whack over their nose every so often. Why? ’Cause they do dumb things, and they go dumb places, and they come out with dumb ideas.

You say, “Well, I’m glad it’s you and not me.” Sorry, it is you. If you take the history of the church, you will discover that God in his amazing providence has chosen continually to use the most unlikely individuals to take a stand in their day for the preservation of the gospel. Recognizing that it is God’s grace that has redeemed them, recognizing that it is God’s grace that continues to keep them, that it is by his grace that they are enabled to live the life and to walk—as the hymn writer says, “Oh, to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be!”[11]—such individuals, in the words of 2 Timothy 1:12, are saying, “I know whom I have believed, and I’m convinced that he’s able to keep what I’ve committed to him against that day.”[12] And when I think about this great nation, and I think about Memorial Day, and I get ready to go the little parade tomorrow morning that goes up to the cemetery and watch the guys doing the old … and everything, and singing the national anthem, and rejoicing in all the privileges of the gospel in this place, I don’t want to forget how we got it. And I don’t want to forget some of the names of the people whom God used.

And I want to tell you, as I close, of one man whose name not 2 percent of you have ever heard. And his name was John Brown—not the “John Brown’s Body” of familiar hymnody but another John Brown. And he lived in the seventeenth century in Scotland, and he was the owner of a little croft. He was a poor man. He never owned more than twenty sheep, it was said, or more than one cow at a time. And he loved Christ. And he and his wife had been married by one of the great Covenanting figures, a man by the name of Alexander Peden. On the day of his wedding, Peden had pronounced what was essentially a word of prophecy over this couple, which is dramatic, when you think about it, for a number of reasons. But he told the bride, Isabel, that she should love this man John because she wouldn’t have him for long; that she should keep his shroud close, because she would need to use it; and when she used it, it would be a shroud that was stained in blood. I’ve been to a number of wedding receptions in the last years, and I never heard that as one of the toasts. But apparently, that was the toast.

This man was living in the time of the persecution of the Scottish church, which Daniel Defoe, who wrote Robinson Crusoe, chronicled as being the most severe persecution in history—greater than that of the Roman emperors or of the Popish inquisitors. And this man had a severe speech impediment. So, he had twenty sheep, one cow, lived in a tiny little place in Ayrshire. For those of you who are golfers, he lived near Turnberry. He lived in the same area out of which came a man by the name of Murdoch, who discovered coal gas; out of which came McAdam, who gave to us blacktop roads; out of which came Baird, who gave to us the genius for the television tube; and out of which came Alexander Fleming, who gave to us penicillin. That’s where this man lived—away in the middle of nowhere.

And he had a speech impediment to boot. And his speech impediment had prevented him from becoming a pastor, so it was said, beca-ca-ca-cause he didn’t think he could do-do-do it. But despite the fact of his impediment, he had become a teacher to young people. And I quote:

An impediment in his speech had forced him to surrender his hope of entering the office of the ministry; but his reading and shrewdness and character fitted him to be the teacher of those near the little farm who desired instruction in the truth as it is in Jesus. [And] one evening in each week, he met with “the young persons of the neighbourhood,” and expounded to them the Bible and the Confession of Faith. In summer they gathered in a sheepfold out in the fields; in winter they formed a circle round the fire of peat which blazed on the kitchen floor in [his] house. The place was wild and solitary, and round it the heather and [the] moss stretched for miles; but it was a training-school for theologians and heroes.[13]

So, you got the picture? Here is a poor man, twenty sheep, one cow, little croft, one wife, baby, speech impediment. He’s got all these young people coming every week, and he’s teaching them the Bible, and he’s teaching them the foundations of the faith.

Well, it was on account of that that the authorities hated him. And Claverhouse came looking for him, representing the establishment at the time. He came, actually, looking for Alexander Peden, who because of his influence as a Covenantor was a wanted man on the lists. Peden had already gone, but he came on Brown and another young man as they were digging peat out of a peat bog. And he came to him, and he gathered a group of soldiers around him, and he said to him, “Go to your prayers, for you shall die immediately.”

I don’t have time to tell you it all, but it’s a wonderful story of how he kneels down on the grass, and he starts to do a very long prayer. John Brown was a bright guy: “If I’m about to die immediately after my prayer, I should probably pray for quite a long time.” So he began to pray for everything he could think of. And he got the guy really ticked off, and the fellow turned, and he said to his friends, “I thought you said that this guy couldn’t preach?” Because apparently, he was praying without any stammer at all—without any impediment. He was just praying profusely and amazingly for the downtrodden of Scotland. He was praying that God would preserve a remnant who would believe the gospel and would continue when he was gone.

And so Claverhouse turns around, and he says, “I thought you said he couldn’t preach?” And they said, “Well, he can’t preach.” And Claverhouse said, “Well, if he has never preached, he sure has muckle prayed.” In other words, he prayed a tremendous deal. And he exclaimed angrily to him, “You have begun to preach.” And John Brown, looking up from his knees, said, “Sir, you know neither the nature of preaching nor of praying, that calls this preaching.”[14] And the biographer says that John Brown

ran to God with the alacrity of a boy bounding home from school. [And] when the prayer was done, Claverhouse spoke again. “Take good-night of your wife and children” …. [And] the woman he loved was standing near, with a baby in her arms. [And] going to her, the martyr said, “Now, Isabel, the day is come that I told you would come, when I spake first to you of marrying me.” [And] she replied, with a fortitude at which probably she herself marvelled afterwards, “Indeed, John, I can willingly part with you.” “That’s all I desire,” he answered; “I have no more to do but die.” He kissed his wife and the bairns with whom he had both prayed and played, and begged God to multiply “purchased and promised blessings” upon them, and gave them his good-bye. Then … “Claverhouse ordered six soldiers to shoot him.”[15]

And the soldiers looked down on the ground and refused to lift their guns. And Claverhouse unclipped his own belt and his own pistol, and he put it to the head of John Brown, and he blew his brains out. And he turned to Isabel, and he said, “What thinkest thou of thy husband now, woman?”[16] And she said, “I never thought so much of him.”[17]

Now, listen. This is John Brown who? John Brown, the guy with twenty sheep. “Oh, that John Brown. Oh, you mean John Brown, the guy with the Bible study for kids in his house? That John Brown? Oh, you mean John Brown from 1685? That John Brown?” Yeah, the John Brown that none of us has got a clue about. That’s exactly right. The John Brown that none of us ever knew, the way nobody knows us. It doesn’t matter. What matters is this: that we guard the gospel, that we turn away from the foolish wranglings and jamberings and inanities, that we consider the dreadful tragedy of professors who have missed the mark, and we rest in the grace of God, saying, “I don’t know how God’s wondrous grace to me is being made known, but I know whom I have believed, and I am committed. And I know that he will keep what I have committed to him against that day.”

You see, the history of the guarding of the gospel is not simply a history of those who, at the level of academics and theology, wrote down the creeds for which we are so thankful, but it is the history of unsung men and women who in their day were prepared to live and die for Jesus Christ.

Let us pray:

Father, I ask you to write these truths in our hearts—the things that are unhelpful to be forgotten; all that is of yourself, that it might be retained. Oh, how we want to make an impact in our day for your glory! I don’t know how it is that the Spirit moves, convicting men of sin.[18] I don’t know when you’ll come, whether we will be called to you, or whether you will come for us, but we want to affirm the wonder of it all—that you will keep that which you’ve committed to us. We rejoice in this as we think of the days that lie ahead, as we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

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[1] 1 Timothy 1:5–6 (NIV 1984).

[2] See 1 Timothy 1:3–4.

[3] See 1 Timothy 3:15.

[4] 1 Timothy 1:18 (paraphrased).

[5] See 2 Timothy 1:5.

[6] Frank Houghton, “Facing a Task Unfinished” (1930).

[7] Leviticus 11:29–30 (NIV 1984).

[8] 1 Corinthians 1:22–24; 2:1–2 (paraphrased).

[9] Edwin Hatch, “Breathe on Me, Breath of God” (1878).

[10] Acts 20:28–30 (paraphrased).

[11] Robert Robinson, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” (1758).

[12] 2 Timothy 1:12 (paraphrased)

[13] Alexander Smellie, Men of the Covenant, vol. 2 (London: Andrew Melrose, 1908), 172–73.

[14] Smellie, 175.

[15] Smellie, 175.

[16] Smellie, 176.

[17] Smellie, 176. Paraphrased.

[18] Daniel Webster Whittle, “I Know Not Why God’s Wondrous Grace” (1883).