It has really been great being here with y’all this weekend. I love the theme of simplicity, and I do not know who did the T-shirt, but it is a brilliant testimony of the simplicity of Christ.
A lot of people, a lot of you probably think that whoever did it got the Scripture wrong. But actually, the Scripture on there is a wonderful gospel message of the simplicity of Christ. I think it was a great touch to put this wonderful testimony there: I made One sorrowful, but He made me glad. I made Christ sorrowful, but He made me glad.
It is a wonderful way to open dialogue with people, and it shows the simplicity of Christ. I am very thankful. It reminds us all of how wonderful our Lord is, how simple He is, and how He calls us to Himself.
For those of you wondering, these are all living stones here. There is a little diversity. If you really want to know, there are some rocks painted gold and some ice cubes with yellow food coloring. We will see about that.
I would like for us to turn to Philippians today. Since we are focused on simplicity, I would like for us to consider the testimony of a brother in the New Testament whom Paul writes of and testifies of—a brother who lived in the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.
The person Paul is speaking of here is Timothy. We have been hearing something of Timothy lately, but we want to see how this simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ was actually lived out in Timothy, and what Paul’s testimony of him is.
Let us pray one more time, and then we can go.
Lord, we are so thankful for the goodness of Your life to us. We are thankful for the wonderful way that You have drawn us and set us apart. We are thankful for the table that You set before us, and that we could come and remember You and worship You, Lord.
We are thankful that, as our brother said, we were sinners. We were destined to die. But in Your great love and wonderful salvation, we are those who, as the redeemed of the Lord, can return with joyful shouts of thanksgiving unto You.
We are thankful, too, that You have given us Your Word. We pray that, as we consider Your Word, we would know and see its very living nature and allow it to speak into our hearts. In Jesus’ name, amen.
I would like for us to look at Philippians 2. Really, this whole chapter deals with the encouragement to be like Christ. It starts off by talking about the very life of Christ and the character we see in Him.
Paul speaks a little bit of himself, and then he testifies of the life of Christ in Timothy and in Epaphroditus. But we are just going to look at Timothy here. We are going to start in Philippians 2:19.
But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly,
so that I also may be encouraged when I learn of your condition.
For I have no one else of kindred spirit
who will genuinely be concerned for your welfare.
For they all seek after their own interests,
not those of Christ Jesus.
But you know of his proven worth,
that he served with me in the furtherance of the gospel
like a child serving his father.
If you look at those verses, there are three things Paul testifies about Timothy that are a wonderful encouragement. We see how Timothy allowed the Lord to come in and meet him.
First, Timothy had a like-mindedness. Yes, he was like-minded with Paul, but more importantly, he was like-minded with Christ.
Second, Timothy would be genuinely, or sincerely, concerned. He had a genuine, sincere concern. Third, he was seeking the interests of Christ. He was concerned about others, not just focused upon himself.
As we think about Timothy, we know that we are first introduced to him in the book of Acts. Does anybody know how old Timothy was when we first meet him?
That is right: we do not know. Y’all are very good Bible students, and I am very impressed.
We do not know his exact age, but in general he was probably a teenager. Let us say he was about eighteen, because he was already serving the Lord. He was visiting other assemblies in other cities, sharing and serving, and he had a wonderful testimony among those various assemblies.
Now, this letter was written to those in Philippi, and this was about twelve or so years later. Timothy was about thirty years old. We are thankful that during the period from when he was first saved until now—twelve or thirteen years later—the life of Christ had been formed in him in a very simple way. He allowed that simplicity of Christ to come in.
Timothy was really blessed because, from 2 Timothy, we know that he had a godly mother and a godly grandmother. They took care of him and pampered him. They did everything for him. Timothy never had to worry about learning how to cook, cleaning his room, or folding his clothes. His grandmother and mother did everything for him.
Then, all of a sudden, Paul comes through town one day and says, “I want you to follow me.”
Timothy had actually seen Paul in a pretty difficult time. One of the things Timothy probably witnessed was Paul being stoned. Remember Acts 14, where Paul went to a city, the people turned on him, and they stoned him? They dragged him outside and thought he was dead, but he rose back up.
Timothy probably saw that because it was right in the area where he grew up. So when he made the choice to leave all the comforts of home, he did not do it naively. He was not just starry-eyed. He said, “Okay, I want to follow the Lord,” and he made a choice.
When you first leave home, it is a different experience. I remember the first time I left home. My mother spoiled me to death. I was a spoiled little brat. She cooked all my food, I never had to worry about cleaning my room, and she always picked my clothes up for me. She fixed wonderful dinners. She was a great cook.
My grandmother took care of me, and it was tough on Stella at first. The first ten years of my marriage, I was perfect, and if anything ever went wrong, it was Stella’s fault. Then I saw the truth, and it set me free.
It was quite a shock going away and having to take care of myself. When I was in junior high school, I went away to a church camp. It was literally the first time I had been away from home, and I did not really know what you were supposed to do.
My mother packed my bag for me, and I went away to camp. Then I went back home, and my mother opened my suitcase. It was just like she had left it—just like she had packed it. I had not opened the suitcase all week. I just kept the same clothes on. I guess I never took a bath.
I went through the whole week. I do not know why the counselors did not wake me up, or whatever. Maybe that is why people did not like me. They did not want to be around me because after three or four days, I was ripe.
But I was pretty naive about things like that. My mom showed how much she loved me. She spoiled me and cared for me. I think, probably in a lot of ways, Timothy had that type of life. So when he went out, it was quite an adventure for him.
We know that as Timothy started on this adventure, everything did not go right all the time. We are reading this letter to the Philippians. When Paul, Timothy, and Silas arrived in Philippi, there was not even an assembly there. There was not a Jewish synagogue. They found some ladies down by the river, and Paul shared the gospel with them.
Then there was this slave girl who was demon-possessed, and Paul cast out the demon. Timothy may have been wondering, “What is going on here? Why am I even here? Is this worth it? There are just a few women, and this lady is crazy with a demon.”
Then all of a sudden, Paul and Silas were thrown in jail, and Timothy was left by himself. One of the ladies who was saved was named Lydia, so she probably took little Timothy into her home and cared for him.
But put yourself in Timothy’s situation. He was probably pretty fearful. He knew Paul and Silas were in jail, and he may have been sitting there saying, “Oh man, I had better hide under the bed. They are coming for me next because they know I was with them.”
Then, just as he was worrying and fretting, wondering whether he should get out of town and whether he would be okay, there was an earthquake. He may have said, “Oh my God, what else is going to happen? The earth is shaking. I am going to die now. The people did not catch me as a prisoner, but now the earthquake is going to kill me.”
But in the end, what he saw was God’s hand of deliverance in all of that. Praise God, through those times, even though Timothy was probably nervous and shaking within, he came through the experience.
What does Paul testify concerning Timothy? Look at Philippians 2:22: “You know of his proven worth.” Timothy had been tested and proven to them. They saw the value of Timothy, so when he came to them, they knew who they were receiving. This was one who had been through something.
It was quite an experience for a young person. Many of you left home on Friday to come out here. For some of you, it was pretty uneventful. But for four of you, it was a very eventful ride out—one you had not planned and one you had not thought of.
You are just going along: “Hey, we are going to a nice retreat this weekend.” Chrissy is driving along, and all of a sudden, before you even know what happened, wham—you are stopped, turned sideways, and bounced inside that truck. Your whole life is just, “Whoa, what happened here?”
Stone and I got there ten or fifteen minutes after the wreck. The thing that really blessed us was seeing that everybody was okay.
What really blessed us the most was that the four of them were caring about other people. They were not focused upon themselves. Chrissy even wanted to go talk to the truck driver to see whether he was okay. There were other people in the other cars—two other cars wrecked.
Praise God, there was a character within those four that got tested right then. They learned something of Christ.
It is one of those experiences that you never volunteer for, but you learn something of Christ in a way that, if you had not gone through that, you would not know Christ in the same way.
The wonderful thing about it is that each of them made a choice. It would have been very reasonable, and we would have all understood, if they had said, “I am kind of shaken up. I think I am going to go home.”
During Paul’s first missionary journey, there was a young man named Mark. He got into a crisis and said, “This is getting a little too much. I am going to go home.”
We would have understood if these four had gone home. We would not have looked down on them in any way. But they made a choice. They said, “No. The Lord called us, and we are making a choice to go on.”
That is what Timothy did in his life. He saw some tough things. He saw some difficult things. But he made a choice to go on.
As we go through life, events happen, and we learn Christ in them. It is not one of the things you volunteer to do, but it is a simple thing of finding and knowing Christ in a richness.
You thought you were just coming out for a nice little youth retreat, but I think that wreck probably sobered each one of us up. I know it sobered the four of them up, but it probably put an alertness on the rest of us, especially when you saw that truck and the pictures of it.
Praise God for the wonderful testimony of fixing our eyes on Jesus. I did not want to mention the wreck the first night. I mentioned it at the end of the first morning I shared, because the focus of the weekend has not been the wreck. It could have very easily been the focus, but the focus of the weekend has been Christ.
We have kept our eyes on Him, and we see His faithfulness. That is how we make it through. We talk about keeping our eyes on Jesus. Even though we are prone to wander and leave the One we love, it is the simplicity of just finding Him right where you are, right in the midst of it.
That is what Timothy learned here, and that was Timothy’s wonderful testimony—the reason Paul was able to write and speak of Timothy as he did.
Paul actually compares Timothy to Christ in this chapter. We are going to do a little exercise here and give ourselves a little bit of a break. Everybody can take a deep breath after me crying and getting emotional. I am actually just a big baby.
We are going to look at the first five verses of this chapter, which describe the very character of Christ. Then we are going to go back and look at the verses we read about Timothy. We will see how many of Timothy’s characteristics are found in these first five verses.
If therefore there is any encouragement in Christ,
if there is any consolation of love,
if there is any fellowship of the Spirit,
if any affection and compassion,
make my joy complete by being of the same mind,
maintaining the same love,
united in spirit, intent on one purpose.
Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit,
but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another
as more important than himself;
do not merely look out for your own personal interests,
but also for the interests of others.
Have this mind in yourselves
which was also in Christ Jesus.
Some translations say, “Have this attitude,” but the literal expression is, “Have this mind in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus.”
So we see that this speaks of the very life and character of Christ. Now, looking back at the verses concerning Timothy, beginning in Philippians 2:20:
For I have no one else of like-mindedness
who will genuinely be concerned for your welfare.
For they all seek after their own interests,
not those of Christ Jesus.
But you know of his proven worth,
that he served with me in the furtherance of the gospel
like a child serving his father.
Take a couple of minutes and look at verse 20. See whether the things described there match the things described in Philippians 2:1-5. Then look at verse 21. We want to see how the simplicity of Christ was formed in Timothy.
The whole thought is that when we are talking about Timothy, we are seeing the life of Christ expressed in him. We see the character and nature of Christ described in the first verses of the chapter, and then we see Timothy displaying that same character in a similar way.
The first thing we see in Philippians 2:20 is Timothy being like-minded. Paul says, “I do not have anyone else around me who is like-minded.” If you really stop and think about it, that is a pretty unusual thing for Paul to say.
Paul was much older than Timothy—at least twenty years older. Paul was probably in his fifties, which is pretty old, you know. But Paul says that Timothy is like-minded with him.
Their ages were not the same. Their temperaments were not alike either. Paul would generally be classified as the extrovert. He was ready to rush into mobs. He was outgoing, and he would stand up in front of people.
Why would we think Timothy was an introvert? Paul was always encouraging him: “Do not be so timid.” Timothy lived up to his name in that way.
Their temperaments were not alike. Their ages were not alike. Paul was very well educated. There were so many differences between them. But they had one thing in common. What was the thing Paul and Timothy had in common?
Jesus. That is the good Sunday school answer.
Outwardly, they were totally different. But the one thing they had in common was Christ, and that is what kept them going on.
Sometimes we have so much naturally in common with people that we do not develop spiritual relationships. It is very comfortable in your comfort zone to be with young people. But what can happen is that our relationship becomes based on our age rather than on Christ.
Obviously, the Lord has us together at various stages of life. He has you together now, and it is to encourage you. But our whole sphere and comfort should not come simply from being around people our own age.
As you have opportunities, some of us older people really do like it when you say hi to us. We like it when you eat with us and deny yourself by not eating all together with your own group, but coming over and sitting with us.
It is one of these things in life we need to watch out for. There is a little phrase that says, “Your greatest blessing can also become your greatest curse.”
One of the great blessings you have is fellowship with one another. It is great. When I was growing up, I was never that serious about the Lord. I was saved, but when I was in junior high and high school, I was not around believers. There were not other young people I knew who were believers. I never went on a retreat like this. I never knew anything like this at all, and I suffered for it.
Obviously, I could have gone to the Lord in all of that. But one of the blessings we have is being with each other. Yet, as I said, that blessing can become a curse or a hindrance if this is all there is. Then we are limiting the Lord.
We are thankful for what we have, but we want to press on for much more and allow Him to continue His work. This is what Paul did with Timothy.
One of the things Paul and Timothy had in common was that Paul always shared Christ with Timothy. Paul taught Timothy, and what he was teaching was always Christ.
What is the little phrase Paul uses concerning his ministry in Corinth? What did Paul preach? It is very simple. What did Paul preach?
Jesus. Paul said, “I preached nothing but Christ, and Him crucified.”
Again, this brings us back to simplicity, and Timothy got it. Timothy saw Paul walk. He saw Paul’s conduct, the way he conducted himself. He saw Christ in Paul.
It was not that Paul took Timothy aside and gave him some post-doctorate course in Christianity. Paul simply shared the life he had—the life of Christ. Paul stayed in a place of simplicity.
He was encouraging Timothy, not by graduating him from the university, but by bringing him down to kindergarten so that he could really see Christ and walk in Him that way.
That is one of the challenges: maintaining our simplicity and purity. The more knowledge we have of Christ and the more years of experience we have with Him, the more we can start to rely upon ourselves. We can start making it more complex and more difficult. We add things to it.
But He keeps wanting to bring us back, bring us back. That is one reason we take the Lord’s table every Sunday morning. It brings us back to the simplicity and purity of our devotion to Him.
It is the very life He has given us. We were sinners, as Jeremiah said. We should have gone to hell. He loved us. He saved us. Now we are not. That is not a complicated formula.
Timothy and Paul were like-minded, and that is the mind of Christ. That is what we desire—that we would be able to continue in these things. Paul was encouraging Timothy to continue in this, and we want to encourage each other to continue in the same way.
A second characteristic we see in Timothy is that he was sincerely concerned for their welfare. Some translations say “genuinely,” and some say “sincerely.”
Paul and Timothy had a sincere concern for those in Philippi, but there were others who were doing things out of selfishness and empty conceit. Paul experienced this when he was in prison in Rome.
In the first part of Philippians 1, Paul says there were people preaching the gospel out of selfishness and empty conceit. They had selfish ambition. They were preaching the gospel, but they were doing it for themselves so that they would get prominence.
Often, we can see people involved in Christian work, but it is like we see more of them than we do Christ. They may be preaching the gospel, and what they say may be the right words. People may even get saved through it. But there can be an undercurrent—a desire to promote themselves: “Look at my ministry. Look how many I led to Christ.”
Praise God, the gospel goes out. But that is not the sincerity and simplicity Paul was really after. The Lord was trying to break through in Paul’s life and Timothy’s life so that they would stay in this place of sincerity.
Sincerity is one of my favorite words in the Bible. Some of you may have heard this before, but the English word sincerity comes from a Latin expression that means “without wax.” The Greek word used here carries the thought of being tested by the sun.
Now you are wondering what all these things up here are, right? We are going to see how they stand up to being tested by the sun.
At the beginning, they looked strong. They looked nice outwardly, beautiful and solid. They looked as though they could do anything. But then we have the heat of the sun.
What this is talking about is the meaning of “without wax.” In the old days, you could have a piece of jewelry, a beautiful gold stone like this. You would go into a shop, and they would say, “This is genuine gold. This is precious, and it costs two thousand dollars.”
You might ask, “How do I know whether this is really genuine?” What they would do was take stones with imperfections and use wax to cover up all the imperfections. It would look beautiful to the untrained eye.
But those who were trained would take the stone outside and put it under the sunlight. They would let the sun shine on it, and it would test it. That is why it was said to be “without wax.” It would be sincere.
If it were a genuine, pure stone—simple and pure—it could be tested. But if it had all the impurities in it, the wax would melt.
Does anybody in here know Spanish? If I asked you to say “without wax” in Spanish, could you do that? The word for wax is cera. So you get the thought: sin cera, without wax. That is where the English word sincere comes from.
Now we see that some of these are not holding up too well under the test of the sun. They are melting and fading away. Those are the ones that cannot stand the heat of the sun.
This is the way it is in our Christian life. Sometimes we can be cruising along in a van or truck, and everything is okay. But all of a sudden, we are tested. The heat of life gets turned up, and we see how much that heat starts to affect us.
Many times, in normal life we are okay. But then we find ourselves under the pressure of daily life. Maybe it is something at school. Maybe it is something else. As the heat comes in and the intensity of the battle increases, we have a tendency to melt.
There was a famous missionary in Africa named C. T. Studd. That is one of the biographies you should read. He would be compared, perhaps, to LeBron James in basketball today, or Tom Brady in football—though Studd had better character than Brady.
He had millions of dollars, and he gave it all away and went to Africa just to share the gospel. He actually died there after becoming sick.
One of his little books, or tracts, was about Christians as he observed them over the years. He called Christians “chocolate soldiers.”
At Christmas, Easter, or different times, you may get a nice solid piece of chocolate. It is pretty tough. Sometimes you cannot even break it. It looks really good.
That is how many of us can look as Christians. We can look hard and strong. Like some of these pieces up here, we can look as though we could stand up to anything.
But if you leave that piece of chocolate in the back seat of your car on a July afternoon, and go back to it a couple of hours later, what is it going to be like? It will be a puddle.
That is the point of these illustrations concerning sincerity. Often, we can put on an outward facade. We can look like super-strong Christians, and we can fake people out a lot of times. But the person we are really kidding is ourselves.
As the Lord puts us through the tests of life, we learn of Him in a fuller and greater way. We are being prepared because the days we are living in are difficult days. The heat of life is only becoming more and more intense in the days we are facing.
We are thankful that Timothy had passed this test. The Lord is trying to encourage us in a similar way: to be strong in Him. It is only by His grace, by staying in that place of simplicity and allowing Him to hold us through the various battles and trials of life.
When we think of something being sincere, we think of something simple and pure. That is all it is. In that simplicity and purity, we can endure the battles and trials of life, so that when the heat comes, we do not melt away and become a big puddle. We are able to stand.
Today is the day and the opportunity we have to do that. Turn back to 2 Timothy for a minute.
Look at 2 Timothy 3. Paul is writing to Timothy, and we are all young Timothys.
Paul begins chapter 3 by saying, “But realize this.” That means, “Wake up.” Realize this: in the last days, difficult times will come. Some translations say perilous times or vicious times.
The days we are living in are only going to get more and more wicked. Even in your lifetime, you have experienced changes that have probably shocked you.
A few years ago, perhaps seven or eight years ago, you probably would not have thought that outwardly our whole society would accept homosexuality. Yet that is something you have had to live through. You have seen this transition. Those of you in public school face it right in your face.
We see same-sex marriage, and now gender neutrality, where someone may say that they do not have to identify as a guy or a girl until they are around twelve years old. These are things you are actually having to live through, and they are shocking things.
I look back, and it is beyond my imagination. Jerry is probably the same way. We never imagined all this could unfold in our lifetime. You knew evil was coming, but the rapidity of evil is moving at a faster pace than any of us imagined.
That is why we read the other day from Hebrews: today is our opportunity. Today is when we need to see.
If you look at 2 Timothy 3, it talks about what goes on in those times. It is not describing the world; it is describing what goes on among believers.
There will be believers who are lovers of self. We probably know believers and think, “They just care about themselves all the time. Do they not care about the Lord?” They are lovers of self. They are lovers of money. They are caught up in making money and loving money. They love the pleasures of the world rather than God.
Sometimes they hold to an outward form of godliness, but deny the very life of it.
That is why this weekend is so critical and important for us: to wake up. There is a battle going on, and we have to see that the way through this battle is the very theme you have had on your heart—staying in that simple, pure relationship with Him.
The third thing the Lord commended Timothy for was that Timothy was seeking the interests of others. Timothy cared about people. He was concerned for them.
In these days, we need not to be like the whole world, which is focused upon itself. We need to be those who really show forth the testimony of His life.
During the early church, the Roman Empire was in control, and it tried to crush Christianity. It is the same spirit that is trying to crush Christianity today. On so many different fronts and in different ways, the enemy is trying to crush and wipe out Christianity.
The same spirit and activity tried to occur in the first century under the Roman Empire, during those first couple of centuries.
But the testimony of those Roman persecutors, as you read their writings, was something they could not understand. They said that no matter how much they persecuted the Christians, “They still love one another.”
The love for one another—the visible love of Christ in individuals’ lives—was something those persecutors could not overcome. In the end, the Roman Empire crumbled, but Christianity continued on.
Today, it can look like Christianity is almost coming to an end. Everything else is getting bigger, and Christianity appears to be getting smaller and smaller. But praise God, we know what the end of the Book says. We know the end of the story.
There is going to be victory. We are the overcomers.
The wonderful thing about overcoming is that in the midst of the battle, you do not think you are overcoming. You usually know you are an overcomer in hindsight.
Those who are going through things are simply trying to exist and press on faithfully. It is not until you are on the other side that you can see, “Wow, they overcame.”
Praise God for those who press on.
In the days we are living in, when you are at youth times, you often hear people say, “Do not spend so much time on Facebook. Do not do this. Do not do that.” I am not going to give you a whole list of don’ts, but I am going to tell you one thing to do.
Try to spend as much time as you can with the Lord, because that is the way through.
It is not merely changing your outward activities. It is having that inward heart that has a simple relationship with Him. If you have that, He will keep you.
He will keep you through the wrecks of life. He will keep you through the exams of life and the various trials.
In my family, I had to go through my mother and father getting a divorce. It was not easy, but I knew the Lord then, and He kept me through it.
My father was a Presbyterian minister, and then he had an affair and got divorced. But if I had not known the Lord, my faith would have been shaken.
That is all we are trying to share. The real heart of this weekend is coming back to that place of having a heart relationship with Him. This is what Paul had. This is what Timothy had.
When we think of simplicity and purity, and of really coming through, that is what it is about. The heart of an overcomer is one that has a heart simply for the Lord.
You can look at all the Bible characters. They were not perfect. They made a lot of mistakes. But the one characteristic they all had was that heart relationship. They knew the Lord; they did not merely know about Him.
It is not simply a matter of having all the teaching and understanding, though that is good. We have to have our hearts drawn back to Him.
If we can have that heart relationship with Him, follow our hearts in the right way, and follow His leading, He will lead us through triumphantly.
That is really our prayer and our desire: that the Lord would keep us all in that place. I am very thankful that we could have this time together, and we do pray for you.
I want to say one last thing. Get beyond your comfort zones. Enjoy the blessedness of one another, but also enjoy the blessedness of many other believers out there.
There is a richness and a vast experience that many have. As we press on together, we can encourage one another, because we all need each other in this race.
Lord, we do worship You. We bless You, Lord, that it is You who have called each one of us. You knew us before we were born.
Lord, You have reached out with Your great hand of love and really pressed us unto Yourself. We are thankful that we can be those who call upon You. We are thankful that we can be those who draw nigh unto You.
Lord, we want our hearts given to You in a fresh way. Lord, take our hearts in a way that we would be those captured by You.
There is that song:
Jesus, Lord, I’m captured by Thy beauty;
All to Thee, my heart, I open wide.
Now set free from all religious duty,
Only let me in Thyself abide.
May we be those abiding in You, Lord, in a place of simplicity and purity, fully devoted to You. In Jesus’ name, amen.