Episode 239: Second Timothy: Two Deposits | Tim Henderson+

Introduction

Please stand for our gospel this morning. The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke, Luke 16:1-13.

Jesus also says to his disciples, there was a rich man who had a manager, and chargers were brought to him. This man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, what is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.

And the manager said to himself, what shall I do since my master is taking the management away from me? I’m not strong enough to dig and I’m ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that when I’m removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.

So summoning his master’s debtors, one by one, he said to the first, how much do you owe me, master? He said, a hundred measures of oil. She said to him, take your bill and sit down quickly and write fifty. Then he said to another, and how much do you owe? And he said, a hundred measures of wheat. And he said to him, take your bill and write eighty. The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness, for the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails, they may receive you into eternal dwellings.

One who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you've not been faithful in what is another's, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters, for he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

The gospel of the Lord. Glory be to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus’ Parable and Its Meaning

Okay. So, that's Jesus' strangest parable, and we're not teaching it this morning. However, what it means in fifteen seconds is he's using this parallel, this image. This is just off the cuff here, okay, but I'm telling you this is true. That what this guy does before he gets fired sets up what will happen to him after he's unemployed.

Jesus is saying what you do in this life right now can affect what happens to you after you die. And then you're like, wait, but are you saying we should lie and steal and be criminal? That's all the last time. He's like, no, no, be good with your money. I was just making a point. That's what's happening in that parable. Okay? Great. Good enough.

What we're actually doing this morning is considering our study of Second Timothy. Okay? You might recall last week we talked about Second Timothy as a farewell address.

Oh, I gotta stay still, we're on screen this morning. Farewell address from Paul to Timothy. It's his last letter, he's dying. He knows that he's dying, and he puts everything he says into three buckets.

Does anybody remember bucket number one? Endure, suffer, stay the hit, don't quit, take the hit, stay in the game. Right? Very good, Ray.

What's bucket number two? Teachers. False teachers are coming. Timothy, they're coming. Get ready, prepare your people, know the truth, study the scriptures.

What's the third bucket? I'm lonely, I'm sad, everyone is deserted me. I've gone, you know, and he's just super sad about the whole thing, okay.

This morning's message fits into that whole paradigm. He's gonna touch on all three buckets in the passage that Genevieve read to us this morning. You may have noticed it, I'm curious. When you were reading it, right, as Genevieve was running through to you, oh, bucket one, did it light up for you? Oh, that's bucket two. Bucket three, it's all in there. So we're gonna look at it, we're gonna take it apart.

But the first thing I want to do here is stare down an interpretive question in this particular passage. Okay? Those of you that read ESV, that read an ESV and you're holding that, as Genevieve read, you didn't hiccup. There was no problem. But if you're reading an NIV or honestly most other translations, you might have thought, wait a minute, what? So here's the deal.

This letter that Paul wrote to Timothy was written in Greek and it's been translated into English for us essentially as a convenience so we don't have to learn to speak Greek in order to know and worship God. Okay? But whenever you try to extract the meaning out of the words in one language and then express that meaning using the words of another language, there are certain risks. One of those risks is sometimes the original, the Greek in this case, carries some ambiguity that you feel compelled to resolve, but you're not sure which way to resolve it. That's exactly what's going on here.

Sometimes it's straightforward; it's pretty easy, direct connection. But this passage is an example where the translators just have to make a choice to resolve this ambiguity. And by the way, it just occurred to me that one of our new fellows, Harrison, is like a Greek and Latin scholar, and so I'm terrified when I get off this stage. She's gonna be like, dude, nothing you said there was true. But I think it's true. Okay? You can correct me if I'm wrong.

Here's verse 12 again. Okay? Here's how you heard it when Genevieve read it from the English Standard Version. She said this, but I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day, here's the line, what has been entrusted to me.

For God so loved the world... — John 3:16

Here it is now in the New International Version. Paul says, yet I’m not ashamed because I know whom I have believed and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.

You catch the difference, right? Which is it? Who is entrusting to whom? Is God entrusting something to Paul, or is Paul entrusting something to God? Okay.

ESV, they claim — they say that it's, it's, you know, that it's, that God is entrusting to Paul. The NIV goes the other direction. NAS, the New American Standard, King James, they agree with the NIV, the Christian Standard agrees with the ESV. But they both footnote it, basically saying, we might be wrong about this.

Here's what's going on. Alright? In Greek, it more literally says this. I’ll put it up here for you. I’m not ashamed, for I know in whom I have trusted, and I’m fully convinced that he is able to guard my deposit until that day. That’s the ambiguous phrase. Go. Guard my deposit.

Now, my deposit could mean, could reasonably mean, my deposit that I gave to God. It’s my deposit. I deposited it. Right? Or it could mean the deposit that is mine because God gave it to me. Right? It’s now my deposit because I’m supposed to guard it. Right?

And the two translations like, well which way, which is it? Is it this? Is it that? Makes sense? You see, does the problem make sense at least?

Without boring you to absolute tears, I think the NIV has it right, which honestly is a little bit unique. I think ESV tends to be more difficult to read but more careful and more precise. But I think the NIV has this right, and that what Paul is doing is he's setting up a chiasm. He's doing this crisscross game here, then it's meant verse 12 is meant to be paired with verse 14.

Here's how they go together if you get twelve and fourteen. It says this, yet I’m not ashamed because I know whom I have believed and I’m convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. And then, guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you. Guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

Okay. I think the NIV gets it right because there certainly is something here, right? That is entrusted to the Lord. Right? He’s the one who’s able to guard it. All translators do — there’s no ambiguity on that. And I’m convinced, but Paul is saying, I am convinced that he, God, is able to guard this deposit. And I think it makes the most sense that he’s able to guard it because he’s been entrusted to guard it. He’s the one who’s the recipient of this particular trust.

And what that means here is that Paul is setting up a crisscross. We have something that we entrust to the Lord, fully confident that he will keep it safe. And he has entrusted something to us that we are obliged to keep safe. And by the way, he lives in us to help us, to enable us to do this task.

Paul, in a fascinating way, is envisioning that our lives are all intertwined with his. There’s this — this is borderline heretical, I know. God has actually placed something in our hands. He entrusts something to us for real, that we matter. We have a role to play in this. It’s not a game. But things actually depend on what we do.

And not just side things, not just insignificant things, but the most valuable thing of all. Right? And all our lives, we walk through life with this thing that’s been entrusted to us, like, oh my goodness, keep it, guard it, don’t blow it, knowing that there is also the whole time something that he is holding—something that he is guarding and keeping and protecting for us. And that we will receive it at the end of the game.

You guys, in a, I think, a shocking and a surprising way — that is, I mean, it’s a little bit uncomfortable here. It is borderline heretical. There is some form of mutual interdependence between lowly creatures such as us and the ineffable, the sublime, the sovereign King who reigns over everything, is exalted over all things, and yet who communes with the lowly. He has invited us to do things that matter and genuinely is, again, bear with me on this, in some regard dependent on our faithfulness, which is a little bit insane.

We entrust something to him, and he entrusts something to us. Okay. Let's talk about the easy one first. What is he entrusting to us? What's your deposit that he has given to you to hold? Okay. Look at verse 13. What you’ve heard from me — keep as the pattern of sound teaching with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you, guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

This, by the way, is not a unique statement in this letter. Paul, and all of Paul’s correspondence with Timothy, this comes up again and again in both 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy. In 1 Timothy 6:20, he said, Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge.

Earlier on in 1 Timothy 3:9, he said, they must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience. Guys, in all these instances, Paul’s talking about the same thing. It is one thing: the deposit, the thing we are to guard, the thing we are to hold and to protect is unmistakably the gospel message. This message must be rightly understood, properly defined, personally believed, and persuasively conveyed.

It is the story, the true story, that Jesus became king by means of his sin atoning, Satan-defeating, death-raising resurrection. And it involves a score of implications, in particular that all must bend the knee to this new king. This king who has defeated our enemy and freed us by his blood.

And it carries the promise that when we trust him, believe his promises, and trust that this new king is a good new king, he will graciously forgive us. He grants us full amnesty for whatever we've done in the old kingdom, full acceptance. It carries the promise that one day we too will be raised from the dead to live forever. And that in the meantime, he will be with us to live in us, to move us, to follow his decrees and his laws.

It's the message that there is a way to be transferred out of this old domain of darkness and into a new kingdom of light. Where the rules of engagement in the old place, the rules of engagement, were so absolutely ruinous. But we enter into this new kingdom in which loving and being loved are the norm. Where mercy and kindness triumph over greed and selfishness.

It's a kingdom in which unholy people like us can be made holy — first by declaration, and then by degrees, for all the world to see. And that, in the end, we get God himself for He is the prize. Everything that He has done, everything that He is doing, is being done to the end that we will be in Him, and He will be in us forever.

And that message is what God has entrusted to us. Paul is saying to Timothy, it was entrusted to you. Right? But God is saying, Bonnie, guard the trust — it’s yours. Kristen, it’s yours, guard the trust. It’s not a game. Randy, it’s actually for you. That’s what’s happening here.

We are to keep it, we are to defend it, we are to protect it. We’re not allowing it to be compromised or modified. We must not lose it by disuse, by corruption, or by cultural adaptation. This cross-bought kinship of Jesus Christ and our resurrection — which is simply guaranteed by His resurrection and His gracious offer of eternal life to all who believe — is to be heralded and lived, made much of, and believed throughout the entire earth, in all corners of the earth, until He comes again, and faith turns to sight.

That is what has been entrusted to us. And by the way, for those of you who like the idea that we are guardians of doctrine, of message, of data, of information, which can be somewhat scientific or precise or exacting, notice in verse 13 it says this: that we are to keep that pattern with faith and love. I happen to think that precision is incredibly important, we have to get it right.

But getting it right necessarily involves mercy and love and kindness and gentleness and warmth. When Jesus came from the Father, He came full of grace and truth. And we must embody both. Both the truthfulness, the particularity — get it right. The news, the information, the data cannot be compromised. But we must also embody the graciousness of His love to unbelieving, frightened, rebellious, broken sinners.

That’s the deal. And by the way, if it seems a little bit insane that He would entrust that to you, it totally is. Right? It’s ridiculous.

There’s a story, I don’t know if you ever heard this. Thomas Edison, of course, one of his many contributions is he invented the light bulb, the incandescent light bulb. And when he did, the trick of that whole thing was to figure out some kind of filament — something that you could run electricity through, it would resist that flow, it would heat up and glow, but then it wouldn’t be instantly consumed.

And the trick was to find something that would resist that long enough to be cost effective, then encased in a glass bulb in a vacuum so the oxygen would slow down the burn. So they spent hours, months, days, maybe years, I don’t know how long, forever and ever and ever trying to get this.

And when he finally gets the working prototype, this is it, this is the ball. This is the one that’s gonna work. He hands it. He entrusts the only functioning incandescent light bulb in the world to a boy who worked in his laboratory. His job was to bring it up the stairs to another part of the lab, guard it and protect it — for all of thirty-five feet, and then bring it to where the next step or whatever they were doing had to happen.

And he faithfully guarded it to the top of the stairs. Then he tripped, and he broke it, and there were no more light bulbs left in the world. At which point they began again to make a new one. Hours and hours later, they had another single light bulb. At which point Edison looked about him to find the very same boy.

And he entrusted to him the second only light bulb in the world, and he faithfully delivered it upstairs. And God seems to me a little bit like that. What a reckless step to entrust the gospel message to us. But He did it, and He continues to do it.

And it’s ours to guard, it’s ours to herald, it’s ours to protect, it’s ours to proclaim. Alright? So, that’s what He entrusts to us. What are we entrusting to Him?

Take a look at this. Paul says, yet I’m not ashamed because I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him for that day.

In this immediate context, Paul is not as explicit. But here’s what I think it is that we’re entrusting to Him. And we could, I could prove this if we had a little more time. I’ll make a quick run at it. You guys, it is our very selves. It is our life. It’s not just our life for these few decades that we get in this moment, but our life in the world to come.

It is our faith. It is our capacity to cling to Him. It is the righteousness that He imparts to us based on the finished work of Christ. And in fact, it is every future promise of goodness, which culminates in God Himself — that we get Him.

Look at what he says in 4:18. This is interesting. Paul says, the Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to His heavenly kingdom.

I don’t know if the apparent contradiction is clear there. When he says, to rescue me from every evil attack, he does not mean I'm never gonna die, I'm never gonna be killed. For one thing, Paul was killed. For another, every one of us dies.

But look at this: the very next line is he says, he will bring me safely to His heavenly kingdom. How’s Paul gonna get to the heavenly kingdom? By dying, right? Okay.

He, the top line came in, I’m never gonna die, I’m gonna go to heaven. Like, well, hang on a second, Paul, right? It’s all coming together. What Paul means here with safety from evil attack, he doesn’t mean escape from death. He means escape from apostasy because apostasy is worse than death.

He means I will escape unbelief. I will not, I’m confident that I will not faithlessly reject Jesus. Paul says, I’m gonna die, that’s fine, it’s baked in — to live is Christ, to die is gain, no problem. It’s coming, it’s soon. But he’s gonna protect me from succumbing to evil in the meantime.

Paul wants to believe, he wants to trust Christ through whatever dark days the future holds, and he’s about to be executed. He wants to be faithful to the end. He wants to inherit all that Christ purchased for him on the cross, and he expects to because God will protect it. God will guard it. God will guard him. Makes sense?

Paul says in 4:8, now there is in store for me that is, saved for me. There is guarded for me. There is held up for me. The crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

Paul’s saying, the crown of righteousness is stored up. And one day, one day, Paul expects that he’s gonna hear the “Well done, good and faithful servant.” It’s saved for him. It is guaranteed for him. And God will not allow him to bail, to crash, to ruin his life.

That confidence, right, draws him on through the pain and difficulty of his circumstance so that he will finish well and guard that which has been entrusted to him. Your ability to guard the thing that’s been entrusted to you is predicated on your confidence that God is guarding what’s been entrusted to Him.

Paul is determined to be faithful with the gospel that was entrusted to him because he’s convinced that God will be faithful with a life that Paul’s entrusted to God. I love this guy. I mean, Paul is the best. He’s just such a stud.

Success and Failure in Faithfulness

So, having then considered these two deposits, look what Paul does next. Now he’s gonna give us a picture of success and failure. Okay?

Take a look: verse 15. You know that everyone in the province of Asia has deserted me, including Phagilas and Hermogenes.

We don’t know much about these two guys; we can barely even pronounce their names. But they were bad. They were not faithful stewards. They did not continue with what would have been entrusted to them.

And Paul basically says, bad, bad, bad for them. And then he flips to a much happier picture.

What was bucket three again? Paul’s lonely. Here’s the deal. Paul’s in some prison. He’s in some out-of-the-way, nowhere hole. Nobody knows where he is. We know he's in prison, somewhere in Rome, but we don’t know where the jail is; he’s in some dungeon somewhere.

And there is this guy, Onesiphorus, who goes hunting for him until he finds him. Right? Onesiphorus was faithful. Everybody abandons Paul, but not this guy. He stays at it, he pursues him, he chases him down.

There was a time where Paul was under house arrest, and that was actually a pretty cushy situation. It would’ve been easy to find, but this is not that. This is an arduous journey to find this lonely, abandoned man, and Onesiphorus does it.

And here’s Paul’s reflection on it. Look at verse 16. It says, may the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. On the contrary, when he was in Rome, he searched hard for me until he found me.

And then he says again, may the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day. You know very well in how many ways he helped me in Ephesus.

That repetition, I think, is a reflection of Paul’s gratitude. And his — this scene, this — this, this take me a second. Bear with me. Give me a minute here. I wanna develop something for you.

A favorite book in all the world is David Copperfield. It’s written by Charles Dickens. It’s this massive story, about 900 pages long. And there are fifty characters and a ton of different storylines.

But one of the secondary storylines is about a man named Mr. Peggotty. And Mr. Peggotty is this huge fisherman — rough and bearded, strong and low education level — and he has a niece, her name is Emily. And Emily is pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, and she is the delight of his soul.

And so there’s this sweet little fragile girl and this hulking protective man. There’s another character I won’t name in case you read the book, but I’ll let you deliver it.

There’s a wealthy, arrogant, presumptuous man who decides he wants Emily for his own. And so she breaks her engagement to run away with this man. And this isn’t a scarlet letter era of the world, where she has deeply and irrevocably shamed herself. She runs off with this gentleman, but — and he could raise her up, he could marry her — but he’s not going to because she’s so beneath him.

And mister Peggotty sees it all in an instant. When his niece disappears and they figure out who he's running off with, he makes it his life's purpose to find her. He leaves everything — everything.

And he literally travels the world from port to port to port to find his niece and to bring her home. She is the absolute delight of his heart. He will spend the rest of his life to seek her and to win her back from her shame and disgrace.

There’s a scene in the book where Mister Peggotty says, whereby I know both as she would go to the world’s furthest end with me if she could once again see me, and that she would fly to the world’s furthest end to keep from seeing me.

For though she has no doubt, no call to doubt my love, and doesn't, he repeats with quiet assurance of the truth of what he said, their shame steps in and keeps between us. And he knows he’ll never find her — she’s hidden.

But he entrusts the help of a girl named Martha, who had been a friend of Emily when they were children. But Martha too has fallen into shame — deeper shame than Emily. She’s become a full-on prostitute.

There was a point that Mister Peggotty says he thought of her like the dirt beneath his feet. But Martha knows, through her own bitter knowledge, where a woman in Emily’s condition might end up.

And so Martha joins the hunt. And when Emily happens her way back through London, in the parts of town that Mister Peggotty is not familiar with, Martha is there to find her, to rescue her, and to bring her home to her uncle who adores her.

And when Mister Peggotty relates what he says, there’s this scene where he just places his hand on his healing chest, sobbing in recollection of his gratitude to Martha who rescued for him his heart’s delight that he could not find without help.

And then he goes on to bless her in an extraordinary way. I think there’s something of that gratitude when Paul says, may the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord. There’s literally nothing Paul can do for Anasiphorus — he’s in jail, about to die. He has no capacity to compensate him, to pay him back.

And so his earnest prayer is, Lord, it’s gonna have to be You. You will be the one to show him mercy. You will be the one to express to him the love that I just am not able to do it.

Paul can’t do anything for him, and he wants God to pay off the debt that he cannot pay. You guys, don’t you want — don’t you want to be part of this great tradition of radical love and service — that you would give your life to something worthy of your life, trusting that God will be faithful with what you entrust to Him, and allowing you the confidence to slingshot you into faithfully carrying out that which has been entrusted to you.

And that we would live grateful lives to those who are shoulder to shoulder with us in the muck. That is what we’re invited to.

And I hope that this morning, if the notion of entrusting your life to Him, I would say it’s all yours. I will not depend on my righteousness, but yours. If that appeals to you, if that speaks to your heart and you’ve never yet made the decision to take all that you are and give it to Him, and accept in exchange for that the privilege and the obligation to tell everyone, everywhere you meet, everywhere you go, about this great God who has given you everything so that they can know Him too.

If that’s appealing to you, come forward and say it to Him. What a joy that we would together be on this incredible mission.

As the God who has all, knows all, needs nothing, hands us the light bulb and says, it’s yours, Jeff. Be faithful with the trust. What a gift.

Conclusion

Lord Jesus, we love You, we lift You up, we adore You, we sing to You, we give to You because You have given everything to us. And Lord, I pray that folks here today might believe at a deeper level that all that they have should be entrusted to You.

We would repent of our unrighteousness and our self-righteousness and depend entirely upon You. Lord, make us faithful so that the people around us would hear how great You are in such a way that they would want to know You too. We love You.