Please turn to 2 Timothy 1. We will begin with verse 8 and read through verse 14.
Be not therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner: but suffer hardship with the glad tidings according to the power of God;
Who saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal,
But hath now been manifested by the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and brought life and incorruption to light through the glad tidings:
Whereunto I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher.
For which cause I suffer also these things: yet I am not ashamed; for I know Him whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to guard that which I have committed unto Him against that day.
Hold the pattern of sound words which thou hast heard from me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.
That good thing which was committed unto thee guard through the Holy Spirit which dwelleth in us.
Let us have a word of prayer.
Dear Lord, we want to thank Thee for gathering us together unto Thy name. Wherever Thy name is, there is Thy presence.
We do realize that we are standing on holy ground. We would remove our shoes and take our place as Thy slaves before Thee. We will open our hearts toward Thee, and we will say to Thee, “Lord, what hast Thou to say to us?”
Speak, for Thy servants hear.
We commit this time into Thy loving hands. Give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation, that we may truly know Thee. To know Thee, and the One whom Thou hast sent, is eternal life.
We give Thee all the praise and glory. In the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
We do want to thank the Lord for giving us such an opportunity. We do realize that the end is coming. We do not know whether there will be more time.
We thank the Lord. He knows our need, and He has gathered us together in His presence to prepare us.
I believe, brothers and sisters, we all know the theme of this conference: what God has entrusted to the church. This is taken from 2 Timothy 1:12-14.
I was assigned to share with you, dear brothers and sisters, concerning verse 12:
I know Him whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to guard that which I have committed unto Him against that day.
At first glance, I thought this was not suitable for our theme. The theme is what God has entrusted to the church, but here Paul says, “I have entrusted the deposit to God.” What has this to do with the church?
But, brothers and sisters, on second thought, I believe this is very suitable for our theme. What can we entrust to the Lord that has not first been entrusted to us? We have to know what God has entrusted to us first; then we will be able to entrust it to Him.
There is another thought. This statement was made by the apostle Paul. What has that to do with the church?
Again, on second thought, I feel that this is for the church. The apostle Paul himself said that he was appointed a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher.
As a preacher, he preached to us what God had shown him. As an apostle, he was assigned to do a work, and that work was to build the church. As a teacher, he must teach us how to build the church and what the responsibility of the church is.
So, in every way, we find that this is related to the church.
I feel that this is a very timely matter, because this is a very special time. Everything is changing, and the coming of the Lord is approaching.
We who are still here have a very special responsibility. We are here to bear the testimony of Jesus, and we are here to bring in His kingdom.
Therefore, we have a very serious responsibility. We need to know very clearly what God has entrusted to us, and we need to be faithful.
As I considered this before the Lord, I hoped that I would be able to share with you, brothers and sisters, in a very simple way. I would like to begin with the word entrusted.
I was thinking about this matter of trust. If God wills, I will speak first concerning the trust, then concerning the trustee, and finally concerning trustworthiness.
Now, you know that in our time there is something very common and increasingly popular: people tend to make a trust.
We take all that we possess and put it into a trust. We want to be sure that everything will be taken care of, whether one day we are incapacitated or whether we have passed away.
We consult a lawyer and draw up a trust. We put everything that we possess into that trust and specify how it should be arranged and distributed.
Most likely, the first trustee will be ourselves, because we trust ourselves more than anybody else.
But, unfortunately, we know that one day we may be unable to act, or we may not be here anymore. So we find someone whom we consider trustworthy and appoint him as our trustee.
When we are unable to act, or when we are deceased, this person will take care of and arrange all our possessions. We trust that he will not change our intention, but will faithfully do what we have set down in the trust.
This is the way modern man does things.
But the question is: Does God need a trust?
Our God is the eternal God. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He will never die; He lives forever. He is ever faithful and ever trustworthy.
So far as God Himself is concerned, He has no need to make a trust. He is well able to take care of everything that He has.
But, strangely, we find that God seems to have the habit of making trusts.
As I meditated upon this matter, I could not find a reason why God should make a trust, because He is well able to manage His affairs throughout eternity. Who is as worthy as He is? He is the most dependable Person to manage His own affairs.
Yet we find in the Word of God that He seems to delight in making trusts. He would like to put what He has into the hands of man.
In the very beginning, God created man. He created man in His own image and after His likeness.
After He created man, He gave man not only responsibility in doing work. Man was to guard and to keep.
But He also gave man dominion—dominion over the birds of the air, the animals on the land, and the fish of the sea.
In other words, He put some of what He has into the hands of man and asked man to manage it for Him. Man was to rule over the earth, bring all things back to the feet of God, and exercise authority for God.
God seems to delight in doing such things. Sometimes I wonder why. There is only one reason I can think of: because God is trustworthy. This is His character, and somehow He would extend that character to man.
Because He trusts in Himself and is perfectly trustworthy, He put trust in man, hoping that man would be as trustworthy as He is.
You remember Mark 11. Our Lord Jesus cursed the fig tree, and the fig tree dried up. The disciples were amazed, and our Lord Jesus said, “Have faith in God.”
In the original, it is, “Have the faith of God.” God is full of faith, and He wants us to have faith just as He has faith. He likes to extend His own character into man.
I think probably that is the reason why God makes trusts. He even trusts man, hoping that man will be trustworthy to Him.
Not only at the beginning of human history was this the case. God trusted Adam to rule over the earth and to bring all things back to God’s feet.
But as we read on, we find that when men began to multiply, they rebelled against God. People worshipped idols and many gods; they left the one true God.
Then the God of glory appeared to Abraham. Abraham believed and followed God, and out of Abraham came the nation of Israel.
In the Old Testament, God sent Moses to Egypt to deliver the children of Israel out of bondage. He brought them unto Himself and led them to Mount Sinai.
There He gave them the Ten Commandments. If they kept the Ten Commandments, they would be His people, and He would be their God.
The first four commandments are related to God’s holiness. He is the only true God, and beside Him there is no God. He is holy—altogether separate; He is all by Himself.
That is what holiness really means. There should not be any image made, His name should not be taken in vain, and there should be the keeping of the Sabbath—that is, trusting in the work of God. God has done it all, and we simply rest in Him.
The first four commandments pertain to God’s holiness. They express the holiness of God. The last six commandments represent God’s righteousness, because God is righteous. He does everything right, and He wants us to be right in all things.
With the Ten Commandments, God made a covenant with the children of Israel. When the whole world was in idol worship, God raised up the nation of Israel and committed His name to that people, that His holiness and righteousness might be known to the world.
To put it another way, God entrusted Himself to the nation of Israel. It was a trust.
But, unfortunately, the children of Israel eventually departed from God. They proved untrustworthy before God.
Yet that did not change God. God is still faithful and trustworthy.
In the fullness of time, God sent His Son into this world, born of a woman and born under the law, that He might redeem us from the curse of the law, that we might receive sonship.
When God responds, He responds not only in a positive way but in an increased way. When He sent His Son into this world, He entrusted Himself fully to His Son.
When the Son was on the earth, He came to declare the Father. To put it another way, as you see the Son, you see the Father.
Our Lord Jesus was faithful to the trust. Throughout His life, He had the Father before Him. He came to glorify the Father, to do the work of the Father, and to declare the Father. Everything was for the Father.
He then died for the glory of the Father. He proved Himself trustworthy to the trust committed to Him.
After our Lord Jesus died and rose from the dead, He appeared to His disciples for forty days. Then He ascended on high and was anointed as Lord and Christ.
On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came down and united the one hundred and twenty believers into one body under one Head. That was the beginning of the church.
On that day, our Head, the Lord Jesus, committed Himself to the church. As God had withheld nothing but entrusted all of Himself to His Son, so our Lord Jesus, as the Head, entrusted to the church, His Body, all of Himself.
It is a complete and perfect trust, and this has been entrusted to the church.
So, brothers and sisters, we would like to see what God has entrusted to the church.
When you read 2 Timothy 1:8, you find this expression:
Be not therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord.
Here we find the testimony of the Lord. To me, this represents the trust that has been entrusted to the church.
Our brother Lance mentioned last night that, in the book of Revelation, the phrase “the testimony of Jesus” or “the testimony of Jesus Christ” is mentioned a number of times.
Why is this so? Because the testimony of Jesus is the very thing that God has entrusted to the church.
What is the testimony of Jesus? The apostle John was exiled to the island of Patmos for the Word of God and for the testimony of Jesus.
Throughout the centuries, this has been the delight in the church: the testimony of Jesus. Can we find people who are faithful to this testimony?
Dear brothers and sisters, I often feel that we do not really realize what God has entrusted to us. God has entrusted Christ Himself to us. He has entrusted Himself wholly to us.
We do not realize what a trust that is.
What is the testimony of Jesus? The whole Bible is the testimony of Jesus.
You remember that our Lord Jesus said, “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of Me; and ye will not come to Me, that ye may have life.”
You also remember the resurrection of our Lord Jesus and how He conversed with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. In the books of Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, they all spoke of Him.
In other words, the testimony of Jesus is none other than Christ Himself.
In order to know what the testimony of Jesus is, perhaps the simplest way is to turn to Revelation 1.
In Revelation 1, we find the vision of our Lord Jesus. In verses 17 and 18, John says:
And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as one dead. And He laid His right hand upon me, saying, Fear not; I am the first and the last,
And the Living one; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.
Now, we know that the apostle John was the one nearest to our Lord Jesus. He was one of the first two who came to our Lord Jesus, and among the twelve apostles, he was the last one who passed away.
He was the one whom Jesus loved, the one who lay upon the breast of our Lord and asked Him questions. In other words, he was most intimate with the Lord.
We may almost say that there was no one who knew the Lord as much as the apostle John. Yet there on Patmos, when he saw the glory of the Lord as the High Priest of the church, he fell down at His feet as dead.
Our knowledge of the Lord Jesus while He was on earth is limited. But the Lord in heaven is infinitely greater than the knowledge we have received.
So, dear brothers and sisters, oftentimes we think that we know the Lord Jesus. Have we not believed in Him as our Saviour? Have we not believed in His cross? Have we not experienced Him as our Comforter?
But our knowledge of our Lord Jesus is always limited. No matter how much we know the Lord Jesus, there is always much more to know about Him. He is the infinite One.
Who is able to know all of God? Throughout eternity, we will continue knowing Christ.
In the Word of God, He has revealed so much to us, yet what we have really understood is very limited. It is the will of God that we should know Him, and know Him, and know Him.
The testimony of Jesus is all-inclusive. It tells us who Jesus is and what Jesus is.
Here we find a very simple and explicit statement concerning our Lord Himself. Who is Jesus Christ? He said, “I am the first and the last.”
He is the first. In other words, He is the beginning; He is the Alpha. Everything begins with Him. Whatever does not begin with Him is not of God.
He is the first; He has the first place in all things. Dear brothers and sisters, do we know Him as the first?
The word first in Scripture does not mean first, second, third, and so on. First in Scripture means that He is all.
Do we know Him as the first? Do we let Him be the first in our life? Do we put Him among Moses and Elijah?
You remember the scene on the Mount of Transfiguration. Peter said, “It is good to be here. Let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
Immediately, the cloud of God’s glory overshadowed them, and everything disappeared. They saw Jesus only. The voice said, “This is My beloved Son: hear Him.”
You cannot put Christ among other people, because it is the Word of God that He is the first. He has the preeminence among all things, and everything must begin with Him.
This is not merely a theory. This is the truth, and it is something God wants us to know: Jesus is the first. Everything in our lives must begin with Him, and He must be first in our life.
Our God is a jealous God. He will not allow us to have anything equal with Christ.
This matter of the first applies to many things. This is the testimony that has been entrusted to the church.
In the church, Christ is the beginning. Everything must come from Christ. In the church, Christ is incomparable. He is our all, and in all.
God gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
This is the testimony of Jesus, and this is entrusted to the church.
Then He said, “I am the last.” He is the ending; He is the goal. Everything is summed up in Him, and everything will give glory to Him.
If our life or our service does not end with Christ, then it has missed the will of God. It is the will of God that all things should be ended in Christ.
What a testimony! One day everything will speak of Christ, because this is the will of God. He is the first and the last. This is His place in the church.
Then He said, “I am the Living One.” This speaks of what He is.
Our Lord Jesus is the Living One. He is life. He is the resurrection and the life. That is what He is.
We know of what He does, but oftentimes we do not know what He is. He is alive.
He is not only the origin of life; He is the Giver of life. Anything related to Him must be life. Whatever is not life is not of Him, because He is the Living One.
Therefore, He is over all things. What we need to know about Christ is to know Him as the Living One—to know His life and to allow His life to control us, to allow His life to be our life.
This is the testimony of Jesus.
Then it is said, “I became dead.” This refers to His work. He is life, but this life went into death in order to rob death of its power and come out in victory.
Dear brothers and sisters, the Lord came into this world and He was dead, but He came out of the tomb. He is the victorious One. We should experience Him as such.
“And behold, I am alive for evermore.” In other words, life has overcome death. He is the resurrection and the life.
This is what we need to know of Him. When you read Philippians 3, the passion of the apostle Paul is to know Him and to know the power of His resurrection.
He said, “Behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.” In other words, He has overcome. The keys are in His hand. He can shut, and He can open.
This is the testimony of Jesus. This is what has been entrusted to the church, and the church is to bear this testimony.
Again, we find in 2 Timothy 1:8:
But suffer hardship with the glad tidings according to the power of God.
Here you find another term: the glad tidings. What has been entrusted to the church? God has entrusted to the church the glad tidings.
We often think of the glad tidings as how our Lord Jesus did the work of redemption, how His blood was shed for the remission of our sins, how His flesh was given to us that we might receive life, and thus we are saved.
This is glad tidings to us. There is nothing more glad than this tidings. We who were dead in sins and transgressions have now been saved by Christ.
We are thankful for this, and we feel that this is our great commission: that we ought to preach this gospel to the whole world.
But when you read the Scripture, you find that the glad tidings entrusted to the church is much more than that.
We often consider the effect of the glad tidings in our lives, but the glad tidings is something much bigger.
When you read Romans 1, Paul says that he was called and separated unto God’s glad tidings, which was promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
In other words, God’s glad tidings concerns His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. The glad tidings is Christ Himself.
The glad tidings includes much more than initial salvation. We see the effect of the glad tidings in our lives—that it saves us—and therefore we call it glad tidings. But the glad tidings itself is Christ Himself.
He is much bigger than the effect He has upon us.
Scripture speaks of the mystery of the glad tidings. In Ephesians 6:19, the apostle Paul says:
And on my behalf, that utterance may be given unto me in opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the glad tidings.
The glad tidings is a mystery. The whole book of Ephesians speaks of the mystery of the glad tidings, and we know that Ephesians includes much more than initial salvation.
In Colossians, Paul speaks of “the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
The glad tidings is Christ Himself. The emphasis is upon the Person of Christ instead of the effect upon us.
Of course, you cannot separate these two things, but the emphasis is upon Christ Himself. This delivers us from being self-centred to being Christ-centred.
This is the testimony that has been entrusted to the church. The church does not preach herself; the church preaches Christ. Christ should be in the forefront, not the church.
We are entrusted with the glad tidings. We often think of Matthew 28 and the Great Commission, and we think that it means preaching to the nations that they may be saved.
But the Great Commission is this: go and disciple all nations. In other words, it is not self-centred; it is Christ-centred.
It is not merely that we are saved; it is that Christ is exalted. We become His disciples, we follow Him, and we are transformed and conformed to His image. This is the glad tidings, that Christ may be all and in all.
Thirdly, we find that what is entrusted to the church is the faith.
We remember the letter of Jude, verse 3:
Beloved, while I was giving all diligence to write unto you of our common salvation, I was constrained to write unto you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints.
Here you find the exhortation to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. The expression contend earnestly actually means agonizing for the faith.
In Ephesians 4:5, Paul says, “One faith.” We who believe in the Lord Jesus should diligently keep the unity of the Spirit, and in that unity of the Spirit there is one faith.
The one faith refers to the fundamental faith concerning our Lord Jesus: we believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
This faith makes us children of God. All who believe in Christ as the Son of God are one in the Spirit.
But when you read on to Ephesians 4:13, Paul says, “Until we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God.”
Here you find not merely one faith, but the faith—the faith we already have and the faith at which we are to arrive.
What is the faith? The faith includes all the truth that we find in the Word of God. All the words and revelation of God constitute the faith.
We believe in all the words and revelation of God. This is something at which we will all arrive.
Today, different people may have different interpretations of Scripture. They all believe in the Lord Jesus; they all believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Yet they have different ideas and different interpretations.
But one day we will all arrive at the faith. We will know the Word of God as the Spirit has taught, and we will arrive at the knowledge of the Son of God.
This knowledge is full knowledge—experiential knowledge. Today, you experience Christ in one way, and I may experience Christ differently.
But one day we will all arrive at the unity of the knowledge of the Son of God. This is the time when the church is fully grown.
Dear brothers and sisters, this is the faith that has been entrusted to the church. This is something that we have to pursue, and something concerning which we must fellowship with one another, that one day we may arrive at the faith.
To put it simply, what has God entrusted to the church?
God has entrusted to the church the testimony of Jesus. God has entrusted to the church the glad tidings. God has entrusted to the church the faith.
This is our responsibility. May the Lord have mercy upon us, that we may know what has been entrusted to us.
It is so much bigger, higher, and greater than we think. How much we need to pursue together.
May the Lord help us. Let us have a word of prayer.
Dear Lord, we want to thank Thee for Thy great love toward us. Thou hast loved us so much that Thou hast entrusted Thyself to us in a way far beyond what we have even thought of.
We do want to thank Thee that Thou canst trust us in such a way. We tremble before Thee lest we fail Thee.
Only by Thy grace may we be able to be faithful. We pray that Thou wilt continue to enlarge our horizon.
Give us heavenly vision, that we may really know Thee, that we may be faithful today. It is all by Thy mercy.
We give Thee glory. In the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.