Watch Your Doctrine and Training

Let me just read the verses before us. This is verse 6: “If you put these things before the brothers…” And one of the red herrings, incidentally, when we do this kind of stuff is someone will put out their hand and say, “What are the things that he’s referring to?” You know, “I want a definitive answer, sir!” Yeah. So you can all argue about that at lunchtime.

“If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.”

Now, before we launch into this, let’s just pray together. I’m going to use an Anglican prayer—which, those of you who are Baptists, just hold on to your chair. You’ll be fine.

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners. Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise, that among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found, through Jesus Christ our Lord.[1] Amen.

For those of you who haven’t found the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, let me commend it to you. It will be a help in your own private devotions, and you may even find it useful in public.

Well, what is the topic now? I’ve forgotten. I don’t have the sheet. Here we go. This is “Watch Your Doctrine and Training.” All right. Okay.

Ministering with Loyalty, Service, and Character

A couple of years ago, a friend in common conversation said, “Have you read the new trilogy by Robert Harris?” And at that point, I didn’t even know who Robert Harris was, let alone his trilogy. But since then, I’ve read most of his books, and you may have as well. But the trilogy had to do with Cicero. And it’s a wonderful three parts on the nature of politics and philosophy at the time. It’s a novel, and the central character is a slave, in that it is in this man’s voice that we learn most of the story. And in considering what it means, here in the passage we’ve just read, to “be a good servant of Christ Jesus,” I was reminded of what was said of Cicero’s slave in the first of these books. It was said of the slave that he was marked by a great loyalty, exemplary service, and sound character.[2] A great loyalty, exemplary service, and sound character. And these characteristics are actually to mark Timothy, Paul says, and all who like him are ministers, or servants, of the gospel.

We make no apology for returning to what is so very basic. I think my calling in life is not to go amongst people to tell people things they’ve never known but to remind people of things that we must never forget. And whether it is in staying married, the key is the basics. There’s not a trip to Maui that will be able to compensate for the fact that you have been neglectful of your marital duties over a period of weeks and months. The same is true of a golf swing. The same is true of making decent poached eggs. The basics are the key. And we can dress it up any way we choose, but these basic elements of personal piety and public ministry are confronting us every time that we turn first to the example of Jesus and then, secondly, to the exhortation of the apostles.

This section between 6 and 10 is reminding us of these very things. Timothy is to put “these things” before the brethren—in the King James Version, “Put the brethren in remembrance of these things.” So he is not only to be alert, as we’ve seen in these first five verses, to the dangers that lay before the people under his care—the dangers of false teaching, as we’ve considered them—but beyond that, behind that, he is to make sure that they understand the nature of the truth. And the attack, which we said this morning, earlier, is essentially on God’s creative, sovereign majesty.

A great loyalty, exemplary service, and sound character are to mark Timothy and all who, like him, are servants of the gospel.

And I went looking for a quote from John Murray, which I now have for you. And incidentally, I should say—and I’m not trying to sell books, but I’m glad to commend everybody else’s books—if you don’t have the Collected Writings of John Murray in the four volumes, then you have a large gap on your shelves. And they will reward your study, your enjoyment, and so on. It contains some of his theological pieces. It contains book reviews. It contains his exposition of different passages—and this from a piece that he gave on the nature of Christian education. I mention it because he’s addressing the fact that education is immediately flawed when it doesn’t start, “In the beginning, God…”[3] And this is his comment:

No tenet is more basic in our Christian faith than the doctrine of creation, that God created the heavens and the earth. This is the answer to the “Whence?” of our world and of the universe. [Where did it come from?] How indispensable to education from the earliest years, even before the child arrives at school age, is the word of Gen. 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” That God made the world and all things is close to the first, if not the first, element of nursery instruction, and it is a capital mistake to think that this concept diminishes in relevance as education advances. No question is more urgent than that of whence. Whence our environment? Whence the universe in which we live? Correlative is the doctrine of God’s providence, that not only did God make the world but that also he sustains it by his power and directs it by his wisdom, and that, as we have derived our being from him, in him we live and move and have our being.[4]

So the doctrine of creation is so fundamental, and I think that’s really what he’s on about there. If we say, “Well, he’s just mentioning something about food and something about marriage”—no, it’s something far more fundamental to that. It would have immediately rung bells for the people in the readers of the initial letter. But we can’t deviate from course when it comes to that.

Just thinking, as I’m speaking to you now: When Paul confronts the situation in Athens, and he recognizes that the people there have all kinds of religious and speculative notions and ideas, and as he moves amongst them, it says that he is moved by it—paroxysm, I think, is the word—and he’s “stirred”[5] by this. And when he’s given the opportunity to address them, you remember how he begins: “You know, I can see you’re a really interested group of people—that you are interested in spiritual things. And I can commend you for that. In fact, I’m going to mention your poets in a moment or two, who drive you in that direction. But here’s the thing: I noticed that you had one little shrine there, ‘To the unknown God.’ I mean, you were just covering your bases, as far as I could tell. You’ve covered, you know, Zeus and so on, but you’ve got the unknown God.” Then he goes, “The one that you regard as unknown I want to proclaim to you: the God who made the world and everything in it.”[6] That’s his opening line. It’s fantastic!

Do you know how many AI apps are blowing up at the moment? Millions and millions of people, because they are able to ask questions of AI, believing that they’re asking questions of God! If Paul was here now, he’d say, “I can tell that you’re a very spiritual group of people, ’cause I’ve seen your Chatbot GTP,” or whatever else it is. Anyway, I’m diverting from course.

The goodness of God in creation was being denied, and people were tempted to listen to the persuasive lies of the devil. And so Paul says, “I want to remind you of the truths of the gospel.” Timothy, and all the other Timothys that follow him, have to be clear about these things—about the creation of man and about the fall of man. Guthrie, who taught me New Testament a hundred years ago, says this “personal directive to Timothy,” in Ephesus, “serves … all ministers of the gospel … called to deal with similar situations.”[7] Course it does! Because of the timelessness of God’s Word.

And there are obvious contemporary illustrations of a distorted view of marriage. Now, this is John Stott, but this is twenty-nine years ago at least. John Stott is making application of this notion of the distortion in relationship to marriage. He says, “A flagrant current misuse of the creation argument is the claim that the practices of heterosexual and homosexual people are equally good because equally created. … But no, what God created was ‘male and female’, with heterosexual marriage as the intended [outcome].”[8] And anything other than that is an attack on God’s creative order.

Being Continually Nourished in the Faith

So, the good minister is to be “nourished,”[9] you will notice. And that’s the phraseology there. It’s a very good Greek word, entrephomenos. It means the continual process of being nourished. The continual process of being nourished. In other words, it’s not like you have a little bit of nourishment, and then you go on for the rest of your life, and perhaps you can find some more. No. It is continual. And how is this to be the case? Well, what it means is that unless the minister of the gospel is being nourished himself—actually, by his own preaching—how in the world do we expect our people to be nourished?

Now, I said some time ago… And I thought this was original when I said it, but I’ve now discovered that Robert Traill had mentioned it a long time ago, like, when Puritans were around. This is what I’ve said: I said to somebody, “One time I was in Florida, and it was a Sunday morning. I was riding a bicycle. And as I’m riding my bicycle, I say to myself, ‘It’s a beautiful morning. I’m riding my bicycle. I don’t need to go to church this morning. I’m not preaching. They don’t know who I am. They don’t know where I am.’” That was fact. I peddle a little bit more, and then I said to myself, “But you should go to church.” Why? “Well, because you’re a Christian. Begg, you’re a Christian first, and then you’re a pastor.” And then I said to myself, “Maybe the only reason God made me a pastor is so that I would go to church!” Right?

Now, I thought that’s pretty good, ’cause I came up with it. But listen. This is Robert Traill. This is Robert Traill. If you have the two volumes of Traill, it’s page 215. And he’s talking about… This is actually a wonderful piece—it goes on forever—on 1 Timothy 4:16. And I’ll save you… I’ll leave you to enjoy the rest of it on your own. But this is what he says: “Faithfulness and painfulness in the ministry of the gospel…” “Faithfulness and painfulness in the ministry of the gospel, promotes a man’s own salvation, in so far as the work of Christianity is woven in with the right discharge of the office of the ministry.” Then here’s the sentence. When I read this, I said, “So I’m not weird!”: “Many ministers can say, that if they had not been ministers, they had in all appearance lost their souls.”[10] It’s quite a thought, isn’t it? That the poor congregation over here has been subjected to me for forty-two years so that I don’t lose my own soul! There’s got to be something to that.

You see, Gary Millar, in a wonderful new book… I can recommend this as well, made available from Truth For Life. Gary Millar’s a Presbyterian principal in—he’s an Irish guy. And it’s a wonderful book called Both/And Ministry: Living and Leading Like Jesus. It’s recently out. And this is what he says: “I[’ve] steadily grown in the conviction that what God asks of leaders is essentially what he asks of all his people—except that leaders have to do it at the front, in full view of God’s people and the watching world.” And then he points out, obviously, if a member of the church community falls in some way, it’s impactful; but it’s not as impactful as if the leaders stumble and fall, if the leaders are living inauthentically. And here’s a sentence: “And nothing damages the church’s reputation more than hypocritical leaders.”[11]

I mean, it would be ridiculous to think about drawling on about insensitive liars,[12] and yet, in the private place of our own souls… You know, it is actually distinctly possible to preach to others for a month of Sundays without our own souls being nourished. And it is that which Paul is on about here. Because he knows. When he writes to the Philippians, he’s able to say about Timothy, “I’ve got nobody else like him, who will take a genuine interest in your welfare.”[13] So he’s got the highest ideals for Timothy, and he loves him with a passion, and he wants for him, as he takes the baton out of his hand, to go on further than Paul himself has gone.

But what he’s speaking about here is the private life of the pastor, the part that only those who are closest to us in life can see. Our children learn more by observation than they learn by tutelage. Our wives know whether we genuinely love God and love his people and love his Word, or we don’t. And God knows. And so Paul is saying, “If you’re going to be the kind of minister, Timothy, that is going to sustain this in the long haul, given the nature of the context in which you’re working, then it is your personal nourishment in the Word, privately, that will sustain your public ministry.” And it’s not training in a classroom, if you like. It’s training in a closet.

It’s possible, as well, for accountability groups (which are wonderfully helpful) and discipleship contexts (which are important, too), for them actually to be a kind of barrier that allows us to say, “Well, I went to the group!” Yeah, well, who cares whether you went to the group? Did you meet with God, you know? “Well, I read my Bible.” Yes, but did you hear from God? “I mean, well, I proclaimed Jesus.” Yes, but did you offer them Christ? Did you offer them the Christ that you know?

That’s the thing that he’s on about. It’s a training—for Timothy and all Timothys—it’s a training that never ends. It’s an ongoing, growing, deepening training. The NIV uses the phrase “brought up in the truths of the faith.”[14] The Authorized Version: “nourished up.”

Now, Timothy had known benefits. When Paul is able to remind him of these things, he does so in a wonderful way. We have very diverse backgrounds here. Some of us have come out of an environment where there was no godly influence on our lives, and the story we have to tell of God’s amazing grace is that he has reached in and saved us out of this stuff. Others of us, the story we have to tell of God’s amazing grace is that he has reached in and saved us and kept us from that stuff. And I used to think, “Well, the former one is the real miracle”—you know, like, you were a Hells Angel, and you fell off your motorbike and got converted. And I went to Sunday school, and the teacher said, “Jesus died for you. Would you trust him?” And I said, “Yeah, I think I’d like to do that.” Said, “Well, yeah, but nobody’s going to care about that.” Well, yeah, they’re going to care about it! Because whether your eyes are blind at age of seventeen or blind at age of seven, the grace that reconciles us to God, the divine interference in our lives, is phenomenal.

And so he says, “You know, you had a godly granny.” So did I. “And you had a godly mom.”[15] So did I. And he says, “So you’ve got a great background, Timothy. But make sure—make sure—that you continue in the things that you have learned, knowing those from whom you have learned them and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which make you wise for salvation.”[16] That’s not chapter 4 of [1 Timothy]. You’ve got to go to 2 Timothy for what I just quoted.

One of my favorite hymns… You know, when you get to this age, you start thinking about your funeral hymns. And I don’t know whether anyone will ever pay attention to any request I have, but the hymn begins,

When all thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view, I’m lost
In wonder, love, and praise. …

Unnumbered comforts to my [care],
Thy tender care bestowed,
Before my infant heart [could know],
From whom those comforts flowed.

When in the slippery paths of youth
With heedless steps I ran,
[Your hand] unseen conveyed me safe
And [brought] me up to man.[17]

It’s fantastic, isn’t it? And Timothy—that was his testimony. But he wasn’t relying on his testimony. ’Cause the future comes in at the rate of sixty seconds a minute. And it would be possible for him to minister in that kind of environment and find himself being suckered into some of the devious notions that were around him. And that’s why it is vitally important that he’s paying attention to the exhortation of Paul, that he is seeing to it—seeing to it—that he is being spiritually nourished: because of his lifelong commitment to growing in grace and in a knowledge of the Lord Jesus.

Avoiding Unspiritual Junk Food

That’s why, at the same time, he has to avoid—verse 7—the unspiritual junk food that is readily available. That’s my own paraphrase, which is not a very good paraphrase. I should just keep my Bible open so that I don’t make stuff up. And let’s see, make sure, in verse 7: “Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths.” There you go. “Nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths.” He does the same thing in 2 Timothy, doesn’t he, when he says virtually the same thing? There’s so much nonsense out there. That kind of material, he’s already pointed out, is actually profane, and it’s absolutely useless.

In chapter 1, he says, “Understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and [the] disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and [the] profane, for those who strike their fathers …, [and] for murderers,”[18] and so on. And he’s saying, “Don’t get yourself wrapped up in that kind of environment. That material is both profane, and it is pathetic. If you fill up on junk food, then you will find that you have a diminishing appetite for solid food.

So it matters what we read. It matters what we listen to. That’s why when you would come home, if your mom made a big Sunday lunch, when you came home and you pushed it around on your plate, she said to you, “So, what were you eating on the way home?” Because she knew that you love that food. So the fact that you weren’t eating it—either you were sick, or you had filled your tummy with stuff that prevented you from enjoying what you know you loved. That’s, I think, a really good argument for making sure that since we have only so much time in our lives and so many books we can read, that we make sure that we are filling our minds with that which is conducive to godliness.

Having mentioned, I’ll just quote it—2 Timothy 2:23: “Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels.” “They breed quarrels.” Some of us were talking about a new generation of pundits who live in a basement somewhere with a tripod and a cell phone and a microphone. And I don’t want to… Not that I’ve viewed much of it, but it seems to me that there’s great opportunity for anybody who wants to move in that realm and deal in matters that are unhelpful and foolish and ignorant and cause people to fight with one another who would never fight with one another, because they would never have known that nonsense if it wasn’t for some guy called Billy Reynolds in a basement somewhere. (And I don’t know anyone called Billy Reynolds.)

Since we have only so much time in our lives and so many books we can read, we ought to make sure that we are filling our minds with that which is conducive to godliness.

You see, Paul is very concerned about this, isn’t he? ’Cause he does the same thing. He tells Titus, “Make sure that when you’re communicating with your people—you make sure that you stick with the devotion to the things that are good and profitable for people.”[19] “But avoid foolish controversies.” This is Titus 3:9: “Avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. As for a person who stirs up division…” That’s how you can stir up division. Either the main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things, or they’re not! And if they are, you won’t do a disservice to anybody to stick with what is main and plain. Coming back to a golf swing: You got to take the club away; you got to take it away, and you got to get it back, and you try and get the clubhead square to the ball. It’s straightforward, but it’s not easy! And to exercise your ministry, let the clubhead do the work. Let the clubhead do the work. We’re servants of this book. That’s why Paul is writing to Timothy, and that’s why the Spirit of God has preserved it: so that we, as other Timothys, at a very practical level, make sure that we’re doing these things.

Training Yourselves for Godliness

Now, the question is: How is it to be achieved? The phraseology is actually gymnaze yourself. It’s the word that gives us gymnasium: “Make sure that you gymnasium yourself towards godliness”—eusebeō. Eusébio, actually, was a great player for the Portuguese team and also for… Yes. Anyway, that’s irrelevant to you. But imagine calling your boy Eusébio, which means “godliness.” That’d be a real challenge. I’m glad I didn’t call my boy that. But I do pray for his godliness. Anyway, there you have it. There you have it: “Train yourself. Get to the gym for godliness.”

Now, I’m going to try and stop myself at this point, lest I say things that are unhelpful. But I have seen far more guys wandering around with a gym bag full of exercise equipment and big jugs of water than I have seen guys running around with their bag full of Bibles and theological books so that they could go and sit in the park in silence and gymnaze themselves in relationship to godliness.

Now, you say, “Well, don’t go wrong here, because Paul immediately has something to say about that.” Yes, I know. That’s why I’m telling you what I’m telling you. “Bodily training is of some value.” Yes! But you’re going to die, right? You’re going to eventually look like a grasshopper[20]—if you have the benefit of looking like a grasshopper. Some of us won’t even get there. But you’re going to end up in Ecclesiastes 12, whether you like it or not—i.e., now you’re going in CVS, and you’re going looking for stuff that you never even knew existed when you were twenty-three years old. You’re asking, “Where are the knee braces?” “Oh! Knee… Well, we’ve got them. Would you like an elbow brace? How about a stick?” And so on. Yeah! “Do you have readers? Do you have readers?” The person says, “What?” They say, “Oh, you need the hearing thing. That’s over in aisle seven. It’s all there.” Okay? Now, that is just to face facts.

Now, “bodily training is of some value.” (As you can see, I lift weights all the time. It’s obvious.) “Bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way.” Why? Because “it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.” In other words, balance. Balance. You know, we can combine the exercise physically with the exercise spiritually because of the technological world in which we now live. I can’t imagine trying to stay on a treadmill while I’m listening to John Stott expound, you know, Ephesians 1. You know, it’s like dissonance for me. But some of you guys, you’re very special. And so that’s okay. You go right ahead. You go right ahead.

Here’s the thing that we always get asked: So how, then—if this is important for us, to gymnaze ourselves towards the dimension of increased godliness—how do we deal with, for example, our preparation for Sunday preaching with respect to our own private devotional lives? Okay? And each of us could answer that in our own way. I remember years ago that being asked at a Ligonier conference and R. C. saying he used to be very exercised about it and concerned, but he had determined along the way that the best thing was just to combine both endeavors, so that he sought to use his own personal preparation time in order to enrich his life. I think that is good, and I accept what he had to say. But I’m brought up old school. I’m brought up with Scripture Union notes, which were given to us at secular school in Scotland and then in England, where you had a passage to read for the day. On the passage, it had questions to ask of the passage: Is there something that I learn here about God the Father? Is there something here I learn about Jesus? Is there something I learn about the Holy Spirit? Is there in this passage a command to obey? Is there in the passage a sin to avoid? Is there in the passage a promise to keep? And so, we were reared in the notion that we weren’t just trying to ramble our way through six verses, but we were actually saying, “I want to know you. I want to know stuff.” Right.

Now, we need to know stuff in order to preach it, but I need to know stuff in order to keep me on the straight and narrow. If you do M’Cheyne, then you know this morning that we read in part of the four readings—we read Solomon’s great collapse. Yeah. He was told, “Do not do this!”[21] And it says in 1 Kings that he had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines.[22] You talk about flat-out disobeying God! I mean, it’s not like he had three wives and one concubine. He got a thousand of the… And he’s no more. The crown is gone. The kingdom’s gone. It’s over.

This is where pride comes in, incidentally. This is why Uzziah was gloriously helped until he became strong, but when he became strong, he grew proud to his own destruction.[23] He decided that these rules didn’t actually apply to him, that these promises weren’t necessary for him.

Michael Baughen, who was a bishop, wrote a number of hymns. And the little one that we learned as children was this:

Before you start the day,
Take time alone to pray,
And rest upon God’s Word
To show the way.

“Before you start the day, take time alone to pray.” “Well, why would I do that? I don’t have to preach on Sunday.” Well, if my devotional life is directly related to my preparation for preaching, guess what? I ain’t got no devotional life.

We have an old friend in California who told my wife, in similar terminology—she said, “Susan, the Word before the world. The Word before the world.” So, let’s go to our Bibles before we go to The Wall Street Journal or The Times or whatever else it is. Because we then view the affairs of our world through the prism of Scripture rather than viewing Scripture through the shifting shadows of our world.

Well, I’ve probably said too much about that.

So, it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take trouble to keep spiritually fit. Godliness, goodness. Just the word godliness is just… Calvin referred to godliness as “the beginning, [the] middle and [the] end of Christian living.”[24] Murray M’Cheyne said that what his congregation needed most in their minister was not his giftedness but his godliness. And again, when Paul writes to Titus, he reminds him that the grace of God which saves us is also the same grace that trains us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.[25] And we’re sinful men. So when we mention jealousy or these things, we understand them—organically understand them. And therefore, the exhortations of Paul, particularly in writing to Timothy in this way, are so apropos, aren’t they? I mean, we could have done the whole letter if we’d had time. “As for you…” This is Timothy, when he gets close to the end: “As for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life.”[26]

Years ago, at Basics, one of my Scottish friends, John Shearer, gave us a talk on that very passage, and I made a note of it at the time. And he had three points. All began with f: “Flee,” “Follow,” and “Fight.” “Flee,” “Follow,” and “Fight.” In other words, he’s issuing a singular call to spiritual athleticism. And there’s nothing passive about it. Nothing passive about it at all! He’s urging this upon them.

J. B. Phillips paraphrases these seventh and eighth verses as follows: “Take time and trouble to keep yourself spiritually fit. Bodily fitness has a certain value, but spiritual fitness is essential both for [the] present life and for the life to come.”[27] I take it that this is the “faithful saying”:[28] “There[’s] no doubt about [it], and Christians should remember it.”[29] That’s verse 9, isn’t it? “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance.”

Hoping in the Savior of All

Well, is it what he just said, or is it what he’s about to say? Somebody interferes in your study in the local group; have them make the coffee. Verse 10: “For to this end we toil and strive.” The good minister works hard with his focus on salvation. Isn’t, really, that what he’s saying here? We toil and we strive “because we have our hopes set on the living God.” Incidentally, Donald Guthrie, my New Testament teacher, says that the trustworthy saying is verse 10.[30] And he should know.

The tenth verse here that we read in conjunction with the fourth verse of chapter 2 is sufficient for a good lunchtime conversation. First Timothy 2:4: “This is good, and … is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”[31] And here we’re told that he “is the Savior of all … who believe.” But is he actually suggesting somehow or another that this is in a special manner and in a special way?

Now, I hope that I can help you with this as I am helped in this matter, because this is an inevitable question. It comes up all the time in different guises. What, then, does it mean that “God so loved the world”?[32] Is there a love of God that is a love for the world? Absolutely there is. Is that a saving love? What does it mean here in this tenth verse? “To this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” What is he saying?

Well, presumably he’s saying that he is “the Savior of all,” if you like, potentially; he is “the Savior of all … who believe” actually and particularly. Calvin says, “The apostle’s meaning here is simply that no nation of the earth and no rank of society is excluded from salvation, since God wills to offer the Gospel to all without exception.”[33] True, right? That the offer of the gospel goes to all without exception.

Therefore, those who have recently bumped up against Reformed theology: Make sure that you read the right people. ’Cause you’ll go wrong very quickly. You will find yourself tied up in your theological underwear, and you will find yourself somehow or another tyrannized by the most ridiculous of thoughts: that “if I make this too clear, too accessible, too available, too obvious, too potentially real, maybe some of the non-elect will get converted!” The caricature of the doctrine of election—the caricature—is that there are some people who want to be saved, and God won’t allow them, and there are other people who don’t want to be saved, and God saves them. That is actually a caricature.

Is it mysterious? Of course it’s mysterious! Because it puts us on our knees before God in the awareness of the fact that in the history of however long our ministry has been, any time anyone was converted, it became very, very obvious to us that God did something here. He did something. And the person… I mean, I just looked over some notes. Actually, I was reading my journal. I must have been bored or something, but I was reading my journal, and I had made a note about a man in our congregation who has a very strange name. He was at—where very clever people go in the military. Where would that be? Yeah, West Point. He’s a West Point graduate (diddly-dee), a graduate of one of the Ivy League law schools and everything, and a cynic to boot. And I had just gone—I found a thing, and it’s where one day I had met him, and as a result of a huge, long conversation, I looked out on the congregation one day, and I saw him singing the hymn. And I said, “Oh, God must have done that.” ’Cause he used to write and tell me, “The hymns in this place stink. I hate the music in here.” I said, “Well, thank you for your encouragement. I’ll pass that along.” But he was very honest, very pointed, very blunt. And now he’s very saved. God did it. God did it.

This is John Murray. Do you remember John Murray, the four volumes? Okay. This is not from his volumes, I don’t think, but it might be. This is it. He’s speaking now. And we’re dealing with verse 10—or Murray is now helping us with verse 10:

We have found [in Scripture] that God himself expresses an ardent desire for the fulfilment of certain things which he has not decreed in his inscrutable counsel to come to pass. This means that there is a will to the realization of what he has not decretively willed, a pleasure towards that which he has not been pleased to decree. This is indeed mysterious, and why he has not brought to pass, in the exercise of his omnipotent power and grace, what is his ardent pleasure lies hid in the sovereign counsel[s] of his will.[34]

So you find yourself with your hand over your mouth before Romans chapter 9, and you recognize that ours is to make as free and as accessible and as available as possible the endearing, alluring, compelling, urgent call of Christ to come to him.

I just was at the… I conducted the funeral of my mother-in-law this time last week. She was ninety-six years old, and she loved Jesus, and so she’s with Jesus. And I was recalling a conversation that she and I had had in 1973 in Philadelphia. And she and her husband had introduced me to Campus Crusade for Christ when I was sixteen, when Americans came to Britain—part of the great American invasion. The English Invasion was the Beatles and the Rolling Stones into America. You guys did a far better job of sending the gospel over to a moribund England. And there they taught me how to share my faith, and for that I’ll always be grateful.

But because of that, my mother-in-law decided that she knew who I should be telling about Jesus. And I didn’t think that she really had… I was twenty-one. I knew if I wanted to tell someone about Jesus, I’ll tell them—when I want to and in my own time. And she said, “Well, no, because I’ve invited a fellow called Michel Bauthier over this afternoon, because he has been coming around the church, and he seems to be interested in spiritual things. And people have been trying to influence him in different ways. And I’ve invited him over so, this afternoon, you can explain the gospel to him.” Well, I was a little ticked—just like “Well, I was just going to go play tennis. I don’t need to go sharing the gospel.” She said, “Well, he’ll be here around”—whatever it was, you know, two o’clock.

Sure enough, the guy shows up. Now, I’d met him before. He wasn’t a stranger to me. But we hadn’t had any conversation like this at all. So she essentially—she put two glasses of iced tea out on the deck and shoved us both out the door. And so there we’re sitting.

And so, after a moment or two of awkwardness, I launched into the program. I said, “Hey, Michel, have you ever heard of the Four Spiritual Laws?”

He said, “No.”

I said, “Well, do you mind if I take a moment and share them with you?”

And he said, “Yeah. Okay.”

I said, “So, well, number one is that God loves you. ‘For God so loved the world, … he gave his only Son.’[35] He loves you and has a purpose to make you his own. That’s law number one. Law number two is, Michel, you’re sinful. We are, by nature, sinful. We’re separated from God. Therefore, we can’t know this for ourselves. Law number three is that there is no way that we can make the jump from our sinful condition into the reality of the forgiveness and presence of God. But the wonderful fact is that he has done that in Jesus—that we can’t access God on our own time or in our own way, because there’s an invisible boundary between ourselves and God, and it’s only penetrated from the Godward side.” And I said, “And the fourth law is that we must individually receive Jesus as our Lord and our Savior.”

And if you know the four laws, then the final piece is you draw the two circles on the napkin or whatever it is. So, you draw one circle, put a chair in the circle, and on the chair you put the letter S, and outside of the circle you put a cross, which stands for Jesus—or you put J. C. outside of the circle. The other circle, the chair, J. C. is on the throne on the chair, and the S, for self, is not outside the circle, but it is inside the circle. Because he doesn’t come to obliterate us; he comes to save us.

And so I said to him, “Which circle would you say represents your life?”

And he said, “Well, the one with the S on it.”

And I said, “Well, which circle would you say you would like to represent your life?”

And he said, “Well, I think the one with Jesus.”

So I said… I was like, “No, this is going wrong. ’Cause now my mother-in-law…”

I said, “Well, maybe we can get back. Maybe we can have another conversation about this.”

He says, “No. I don’t need another conversation. Let’s do this now.”

I was flabbergasted, for forty reasons, but not least of all because now I’m going to have to go in and tell my mother-in-law, “You were right! Do you know what happened out there?”

Now, that guy, he finally died of cancer. He went on to be a pilot for US Airways. He was involved in a church, an elder in a church in Pittsburgh, and he died as a relatively young man some years ago. But what happened there? Well, God opened his eyes. God softened his heart. God saved him.

And here’s the thing that I didn’t know until one of my sister-in-laws told the story of my mother-in-law’s conversion. My father-in-law traveled a lot for business, and they had moved into a new home, and he was gone at least a quarter, two-thirds of the time. A lady from down the street said to my mother-in-law, who was a young mother with four daughters, “We have a Bible study. It meets in our basement. Do you think you would ever like to come?” So she said, “Yeah, I’d like to come.” She grew up in a Methodist church, going with her grandmother. She had some kind of background there but no knowledge of the gospel.

Long and the short of it is: She goes to this study. She realizes these people are serious about the Bible; they’re serious about Jesus. She continues to go. One day at the study, the lady says to the ladies—the leader says, “Tonight on television, there is an evangelist who will be speaking, and I think if you tune in at such and such a time, you might enjoy that.” Well, of course, it was Billy Graham. And Billy Graham then, in his own inimitable style: “The Bible says… And I’m going to wait for you, but you come. You come.” And as he led in prayer on the TV, my mother-in-law was converted. And so she had a strong conviction that when the Bible tells us that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance[36]—she said, “So let’s get out there, and let’s make the message known.”

But let’s remember that the prerequisite for effective public ministry is in the private, closet gymnasium that will nurture us in the direction of godliness.

That’s long enough. Let’s pray:

Lord, some of this is just a bunch of stories, but perhaps they intersect with some of us as we pray for our children or as we pray for members of our family. And some of us, perhaps, are as reticent as I was in being bold to extend the free offer of the gospel to friends and neighbors and men. And so we pray that the benefit of our being together now, looking at your Word, being stirred up and directed, may yield “the peaceable fruit of righteousness”[37] and that in turn we might be good ministers of the gospel. Most of us won’t be great, but we’d like at least to be good. And so we pray for your help. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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[1] The Book of Common Prayer.

[2] Robert Harris, Dictator (London: Hutchison, 2015), 143.

[3] Genesis 1:1 (ESV).

[4] “Christian Education,” in Collected Writings of John Murray, vol. 1, The Claims of Truth (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1976), 369.

[5] Acts 17:16 (KJV).

[6] Acts 17:22–24 (paraphrased).

[7] Donald Guthrie, The Pastoral Epistles: An Introduction and Commentary, 2nd ed, The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Leicester, UK: Inter-Varsity, 1990), 106.

[8] John Stott, The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus: The Life of the Local Church, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1996), 102.

[9] 1 Timothy 4:6 (KJV).

[10] “By What Means May Ministers Best Win Souls?,” in The Works of Robert Traill (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2020), 1:215.

[11] Gary Millar, Both/And Ministry: Living and Leading Like Jesus (The Good Book Company, 2024), 95.

[12] See 1 Timothy 4:2.

[13] Philippians 2:20 (paraphrased).

[14] 1 Timothy 4:6 (NIV 1984).

[15] 2 Timothy 1:5 (paraphrased).

[16] 2 Timothy 3:14–15 (paraphrased).

[17] Joseph Addison, “When All Thy Mercies, O My God” (1712).

[18] 1 Timothy 1:9 (ESV).

[19] Titus 3:8 (paraphrased).

[20] Ecclesiastes 12:5.

[21] See Deuteronomy 17:16–20.

[22] See 1 Kings 11:3.

[23] See 2 Chronicles 26:15–16.

[24] John Calvin, The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians and the Epistles to Timothy, Titus and Philemon, trans. T. A. Smail, ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 244.

[25] See Titus 2:11–12.

[26] 1 Timothy 6:11–12 (ESV).

[27] 1 Timothy 4:7–8 (Phillips).

[28] 1 Timothy 4:9 (KJV).

[29] 1 Timothy 4:9 (Phillips).

[30] Guthrie, Pastoral Epistles, 107.

[31] 1 Timothy 2:3–4 (ESV).

[32] John 3:16 (ESV).

[33] John Calvin, Second Epistle, 208–209.

[34] Arthur W. Kuschke Jr., John Murray, and Ned B. Stonehouse, Report of the Committee on the Free Offer of the Gospel, submitted to the 15th General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 1948, https://opc.org/GA/free_offer.html.

[35] John 3:16 (ESV).

[36] See 2 Peter 3:9.

[37] Hebrews 12:11 (KJV).