Then came he to Derbe and Lystra: and behold a certain disciple was there, named Timotheus.
Timotheus
1. The first of Paul’s missionary journeys reached its furthest limit at Lystra--the most uncivilised place he ever visited. Even here, however, he left a Church which he now found standing steadfast, and among its members a youth of peculiar promise, who bore the now famous name of Timothy.
2. On the mother’s side Timothy was a Jew. Both mother and grandmother were devout, and it is therefore surprising that “his father was a Greek,” and probably a heathen. Mixed marriages were held in horror by orthodox Jews. At Lystra, however, Jews were few, and the rigour of custom must have been relaxed. Timothy had never been circumcised. But what might escape remark in Lycaonia, would prove a scandal elsewhere; and with his usual practical judgment, Paul “took and circumcised him” before he led him forth to work.
3. The spiritual ancestry of Timothy is as clearly marked as the natural. Prepared for the willing reception of the gospel by the godly education of his childhood, he became Paul’s “own son in the faith.” In the interval between the two visits he had advanced to a character of marked ability and usefulness. Paul, always on the watch for helpers, saw the materials lying ready for a noble missionary life. “Him would Paul have to go forth with him.” And with this period we connect the numerous allusions to his ordination service. The Church appears gathered in solemn assembly. He makes “a good profession before many witnesses.” Then the apostle explains the labours and the risks of the Christian warfare, and charges his “son” to be brave, patient, and believing. The laying on of hands succeeds; and the prayer of the Church rises to heaven on his behalf. Nor in vain; for to that moment is referred the special anointing of the Spirit which fitted the young man for his future ministry. And, amid smiles and tears, we see him going forth into the great world, in the footsteps of the Captain who had chosen him to be a soldier.
4. Timothy’s work constantly widened in range and in importance. Very young when he went out with Paul, it was fitting that he should at first remain in the background. But, from references in the epistles, we discover how usefully and industriously he was employed. From Corinth he is sent to the Thessalonians, “to establish and comfort them in their faith.” From Ephesus he is sent to the Corinthians “to bring them into remembrance” of the truth they seemed to have forgotten. He passed through his apprenticeship in a loyal and loving spirit; and presently rose to be a master, with enterprises of his own. Still comparatively young, he is left at Ephesus with an Herculean task on his hands. He becomes the recognised successor of the great apostle, invested with an authority hardly inferior to his own. When that apostle’s end draws near, and he seeks someone to be his comforter and executor, it is to Timothy that the summons is sent; and we learn, from the Epistle to the Hebrews, that he was imprisoned for Christ, and, if tradition is to be trusted, he died at last a martyr’s death in the streets of his own turbulent Ephesus.
5. With little beyond allusions to guide us, it is difficult to decide on Timothy’s qualities. His bodily health was feeble, and required stimulants; his natural disposition appears to have been as sensitive as Paul’s, and perhaps deficient in forwardness and courage. The situation of affairs at Ephesus was at the time extremely difficult and even dangerous. The bravest might easily have lost heart in such an atmosphere, and would have needed to sustain him every motive which an apostle could supply. Paul did not think meanly of his follower. On the contrary, he speaks of his unfeigned faith, his unwearied service, his strict fidelity. He declares that in all the chosen hand of his fellow labourers there is none so disinterested, so full of sympathy, so much after his own heart. More dazzling names than his are to be seen in the firmament of the early Church; Apollos flames across the sky, leaving behind the brilliant sparks of his Alexandrian rhetoric: but the star of Timotheus brains on with a gentle, gracious, and unfading lustre, holding forth the word of life.
6. Whatever the contrast between Timothy’s mission and ours, his character is one which, in its strength, its modesty, and its devotedness, may be ours. Character is a building of which God is the architect, and all the designs are His. But the building rises stone on stone, and is the work of many different hands; and it is useful to inquire what influences we can trace as helping to make this man what he was.
(1) One was the Bible. “From a child” it had been his great lesson book. And now, in this great age of making books, where, by common confession, is there a book that will do for character what the Bible does?
(2) No less helpful were personal influences. The Bible is the best of books; but the character of those who teach it adds immensely to its power. Now the earliest Scripture lessons of Timothy were mingled with the happy associations of hours spent at the feet of his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. When they and he were parted, the same good work was carried on by apostolic hands. How much may be done to impart interest and impressiveness to the Word of God! The desire to see her child become another Timothy lives in many a Christian mother’s heart: does not the power to make him so, under the Divine blessing, lie largely in her hands? The Bible class, wisely conducted, becomes the very garden of the Lord, where the young plants are nourished to a full stature and strength.
(3) Yet, after all, the main human force at work in the formation of Timothy’s character was Timothy himself: for the determining will was his own. (W. Brock, jun.)
Timothy; or maternal goodness
I. Timothy’s beauty of character is traceable throughout his life. He was not converted from sin and shame in mature life. From a child he knew the Holy Scriptures experimentally, as well as being the founts of doctrine and the rules of conduct. A young man, just budding into strength and freedom, he became a Christian, whose character endeared him to the community of which both his grandmother and mother were distinguished ornaments, and whose gifts, exercised and proved, commanded the Church’s admiration. Every way it is important that the young should feel that their youth belongs to Christ. It is contrary to the spirit and intention of our holy religion to treat them as the subjects of a depravity which must have its way, and consign them to years of separation from God. A young soul may be rendered hopeless of spiritual good through misrepresentation of the actual facts of life. Children naturally fall into what you say they are. The Saviour of men is the Saviour of the young. He who took them in His arms and blessed them, is always longing for the homage and affection of fresh, young hearts. He deprecates one hour spent in the service of evil. The history of Timothy proves the possibility, and shows the beauty of Divine life in youth.
II. the sacred influence of a mother’s piety. Eunice was a Jewess--and to “the unfeigned faith which dwelt in her” is to be traced the spiritual development of Timothy. How many of the most renowned of the Church’s heroes have been born again through the prayers and example of pious mothers! We think of Jochebed, Hannah, Mary, Salome, etc. As a mother is her child’s world, it is evident that on her must depend its first impressions. As she is kind and gentle, graceful and sweet, pure and devout, or the reverse, so will her child’s life be. How mothers should cultivate their own hearts and watch over their own doings!
III. The home hindrances of Timothy’s spiritual life. “His father was a Greek,” which indicates not only the diversity between himself and wife, as of different races, but that his wife believed, and he remained an idolater. This divergence had of necessity to be made manifest to the child. The mother taught him the truths of the religion his father despised. It is a picture on which, even in these days, we are often called to look. There was sometimes sorrow in the house, because there was no spiritual sympathy. The strength of his mother’s faith and love were enough to overcome this hindrance. But it is not always so. Sometimes the dead weight of a godless husband or wife is sufficient to drag down and crush the goodness which is allied with it. The waters wear the stones, and sometimes the marriage bells ring the knell of the spiritual life and profession. (W. H. Davison.)
Paul and Timothy
I. Paul took Silas with him, but he could not give up a man like Barnabas and think no more about him. He who can forget old friends is no apostle of Jesus Christ. Besides, Paul was going “again” to the churches. The people would ask about Barnabas. We ask questions that open graves and heart wounds. The man who has not seen you for years asks you how that sweet little boy of yours is, and it seems to you incredible that a grief that filled your house with darkness had not made itself known to your friend. What must Paul’s answer have been? He was a faithful man true as steel: he knew not the genius of equivocation and the fine art of telling lies. We have to account for old associations being ruptured, we have to explain new faces and new relationships.
II. Paul came to Derbe and Lystra, and found “a certain disciple named Timotheus.” Long ago we read about a young man whose name was Saul. We begin in obscurity, we are pointed at as hardly to be identified. If the foolish tree could be taking itself up in order to show its antecedents, it would soon be killed. All that we have to do is so to lift ourselves up in God’s light and rain, as to bring forth fruit. We may be now nothing more than “certain disciples,” but we may still be disciples.
III. Timothy was the son of a Jewess and a Greek. Happy man, to stand between two civilisations! What must the boy have been? Two such fires meeting in his blood; two such histories recounting themselves in his memory! How able to look well round him and to understand the mystery of Law and the mystery of Beauty! His religion might go up into superstition, his philosophy might develop into scepticism and sneering; if he touched Christ, he touched One who to the Jew was a stumbling block and to the Greek foolishness, but to the believing Timothy the power of God and the wisdom of God. We ourselves see this double relationship sometimes in life. Your mother prayed--your father never prayed. You are a child of the night and of the day, and you feel it, and sometimes you are plunged in the darkness of the one parentage, and sometimes you are away on the bright broad wings of the other into the light. But is it possible that a Jewess could marry a Greek? I should have said, No, but for what you have done.
IV. Timothy “was well reported of.” Character is very subtle. Timothy never asked any man to speak well of him, and yet no man could speak ill of the youth. Do not appeal to one another’s charitable judgment for a character, but so live that character will come. Live your character; do not be painted as good men, but paint your own character in your own blood.
V. “Him would Paul have to go forth with him.” Paul could not do without youth. A young man can run, and is not burdened with a sense of his own respectability. God bless the young life! There are those who would snub the youthful soul, and never permit him to be seen or heard. Paul loved the young, and would never give them up so long as they were true; but if ever they began to prove themselves fickle, he would give them up and their uncle Barnabas with them. A soldier could not do with a coward; only be true, and Paul would be your lifelong friend.
VI. He took and circumcised Timothy. This from Paul, who would not circumcise Titus! But the reason is given (verse 3). It was therefore no breach of the apostle’s stern policy that, under circumstances so peculiar, he should respect a temporary prejudice. Now they start, Paul, and Silas, and Timotheus (verse 4). Do not be afraid of the word “Decrees”; they were decrees of liberty. What they signed was the Magna Charts of the Church; freedom centred in God and in the Cross. Christ’s followers are not lawless; they have decrees to keep. The spirit of authority is the spirit of rest when it brings with it the assurance that the authority is not arbitrary but rational, not local but universal, not imperfect but Divine. VII. “So were the churches established,” etc. These are the true results which accompany every true mission--edification first, and evangelisation second. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Trained from childhood
As Alexander the Great attained to have such a puissant army, whereby he conquered the world, by having children born and brought up in his camp, whereby they became so well acquainted and exercised with weapons from their swaddling-clothes, that they looked for no other wealth or country but to fight; even so, if thou wouldst have thy children either to do great matters, or to live honestly by their own virtuous endeavours, thou must acquaint them with painstaking in their youth, and so bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. (Cawdray.)
Children, cost of training cheap in the long run
An Englishman visiting Sweden, noticing their care for educating children, who are taken from the streets and highways and placed in special schools, inquired if it was not costly. He received the suggestive answer, “Yes, it is costly, but not dear. We Swedes are not rich enough to let a child grow up in ignorance, misery, and crime, to become a scourge to society as well as a disgrace to himself.” (The Lantern.)
Early impressions permanent
I stood in a house in one of the Long Island villages, not long ago, and I saw a beautiful tree, and I said to the owner: “That is a very fine tree; but what a curious crook there is in it.” “Yes,” said he; “I planted that tree, and when it was a year old, I went to New York, and worked as a mechanic for a year or two, and when I came back I found they had allowed something to stand against the tree, and so it has always had that crook.” And so, I thought, it was with the influence upon children, If you allow anything to stand in the way of moral influence against a child on this side or that side, to the latest day of its life on earth and through all eternity it will show the pressure. No wonder Lord Byron was bad. Do you know his mother said to him, when she saw him one day limping across the floor with his unsound foot: “Get out of my way, you lame brat!” What chance for a boy like that? (T. De W. Talmage, D. D.)
Early piety, importance of
The most important ten years of human life are from five to fifteen years of age. The vast majority of those who pass twenty irreligious are never converted at all Dr. Spencer tells us that, out of two hundred and thirty-five hopeful converts in his church, one hundred and thirty-eight were under twenty years, only four had passed their fiftieth year. I have been permitted during my ministry to receive nearly one thousand persons into the Church on confession of their faith, and not one dozen of these had outgrown their fiftieth year. I did indeed once baptise a veteran of eighty-five, but the case was so remarkable that it excited the talk and wonder of the town. Such late repentances are too much like what the blunt, dying soldier called “flinging the fag end of one’s life into the face of the Almighty.” (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)
Children early taught idolatry
The heathen mother takes her babe to the idol temple, and teaches it to clasp its little hands before its forehead, in the attitude of prayer, long before it can utter a word. As soon as it can walk, it is taught to gather a few flowers or fruits, or put a little rice upon a banana leaf, and lay them upon the altar before the idol god. As soon as it can utter the names of its parents, so soon it is taught to offer up its petitions before the images. Who ever saw a heathen child that could speak, and not pray? Christian mothers, why is it that so many children grow up in this enlightened land without learning to pray?
Mother, influence of
The mother of the Beechers prayed during life and in death, “that her children might be trained up for God.” One of her journals contains this simple record--“This morning I rose very early to pray for my children, and especially that my sons may be ministers and missionaries of Jesus Christ.” What has been the result? That for all her children her prayers have been answered. Her five sons are all ministers and missionaries of Christ. One of them she has welcomed to heaven; another is now the most powerful preacher in America; and her daughter, Mrs. Beecher Stowe, is, by her writings, not less widely or favourably known. (W. Landels, D. D.)
Mother, influence of
Someone asked a man of wisdom when the education of a child should be commenced? “Twenty years before his birth, by educating his mother,” was the reply. (Christian Advocate.)
Mother, influence of
Upon a tombstone erected by a family of children was the inscription “Our mother; she always made home happy.” When Madame Campan asked Napoleon what was the great want of the trench nation, his reply was “Mothers.”
Mother, prayers of a
Samuel Budgett was about nine years of age, when, one day passing his mother’s door, he heard her engaged in earnest prayer for her family, and for himself by name. He thought, “My mother is more earnest that I should be saved than I am for my own salvation.” In that hour he became decided to serve God, and the impression thus made was never effaced. (W. Arthur.)