Mark 6:30-44: The Most Amazing Miracle

INTRODUCTION

On our door at Village place we have a little poster our daughter made for us. On it is a picture of five little round loaves of bread and two fishes. Written above the picture are these words: “Love is a basket with five loaves and two fish. It is never enough until you start to give it away.”

No one has ever remarked about it. I wonder whether those words make sense to anyone who may read it.

But you will know. It refers to the most spectacular of Jesus’s miracles, The Feeding of the 5000—the only miracle that is included in all four gospels.

Here is the story from Mark 6:30-44:

The apostles returned to Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a lonely place by themselves.

Now many saw them going, and knew them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns, and got there ahead of them.

As he landed he saw a great throng, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a lonely place, and the hour is now late; send them away, to go into the country and villages round about and buy themselves something to eat.”

But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.”

And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?”

And he said to them, “How many loaves have you? Go and see.”

And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.”

Then he commanded them all to sit down by companies upon the green grass. So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men.

I. Here is the situation.

A. What happened was an interruption. Someone said, “Life is what happens when you are making other plans.”

But if we think about it, most of our best opportunities to serve God come as interruptions in our daily routine.

Suppose I am relaxing, reading my book when I get a phone call. Someone I know is in the hospital, I need to go and see her, or him.

Or I hear of a friend who has lost a loved one. I need to be with them. I don’t know what to say. It is awkward. But I know I need to be there, if just to hold that person’s hand and pray and let them know I care.

Someone seeks you out for conversation. You would rather watch your TV program, but you turn it off so that you can meet that person’s need for friendship.

Useful people’s lives are full of interruptions. They respond to needs, and they have the satisfaction that their lives count for something.

Jesus’s life was full of interruptions—interruptions that taxed his energy, but interruptions that he welcomed.

This multitude that had followed Jesus was an interruption that—weary as he was—he welcomed.

B. The disciples had just returned from their first mission trip without Jesus. They had many experiences to report and to talk over—interesting experiences, problems, and questions.

Also, they had just received the tragic news of the murder of John the Baptist by the cruel tyrant, King Herod.

John was Jesus’s cousin. He was the one person on earth who probably understood Jesus better than any other. John was the one who introduced Jesus to the nation when Jesus began his public ministry.

But John had fallen afoul of King Herod. Herod had locked him up, and then, during a drunken party, Herod had had him executed.

This news of John’s tragic death must have troubled Jesus. John had paid the ultimate price for his faithfulness. Jesus had to see in John’s fate, a foretaste of the ordeal he would also experience.

C. So, in order to escape the crowd, Jesus and his disciples set out in a boat. They intended to climb up the side of a mountain and find a quiet place to talk things over, pray, and be refreshed.

But it was not to be. The crowd followed, running around the lake, and by the time Jesus arrived in the boat, the fastest runners in the crowd were already there waiting for him.

II. And then we read of Jesus’s reaction to this interruption of his plans: (v34):  “As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.”

A. The reason Jesus welcomed the crowds—no matter how tired he must have been—no matter how it interrupted his plans—was because they were “like sheep without a shepherd.”

Sheep without a shepherd are helpless creatures. Horses, dogs, goats, and donkeys can survive in the wild, but domesticated sheep are helpless creatures. Wild sheep are resourceful, but humans have bred all of the intelligence and resourcefulness out of domesticated sheep. Domesticated sheep are docile and dependent. They depend on the shepherd to lead them to food and water and to keep them safe.

That is why in the ancient world, kings called themselves “shepherds,” and in the Old Testament, leaderless people were called “sheep without a shepherd.”

B. So Jesus’s response to these lost, leaderless people was compassion.

One woman gave this definition of compassion. She said, “Compassion is feeling the hurt in my sister’s heart.”

I thought that was a good definition, but recently I have come to realize that that definition falls short.

“Feeling the hurt in my sister’s heart”—if that’s as far as it goes is sympathy; it is not compassion. Compassion is to feel the hurt—and to do something about it

Sympathy is five loaves and two fish in a basket. Compassion is giving what we have in acts of helpfulness, kindness, and self-denial.

That is the lesson of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite may have felt sympathy as they passed by the wounded, dying man. But they did nothing. The Samaritan showed compassion. He stopped, poured oil and wine into the man’s wounds, bandaged them, put him on his donkey and took him to the inn and cared for him.

C. Jesus knew that the first thing these harassed and helpless people needed was a word from God.

How we would have loved to hear that message. But I think we can imagine some of the things Jesus may have said.

He may have said, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

He may have said, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

He might have told them the story of the Prodigal Son and the Waiting Father.

III. When the hour grew late the disciples made a sensible suggestion. They came to Jesus and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.”

A. I want to call our attention to what this tells us about how eager the people were for the teaching that Jesus was giving them. They were so hungry for God’s Word that they didn’t go home, even though they had been all day without food!

I have wondered how Jesus could have spoken so loudly that more than 5000 people would be able to hear what he said.

I remember that, in the days of my youth, before public address systems were common, preachers developed huge voices.

Here is an interesting bit of information. It is taken from Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography:

Benjamin Franklin had read reports that George Whitfield preached to crowds of tens of thousands in England.

So when Whitfield came to America, Franklin went to a revival meeting of Whitfield’s in Philadelphia.

He went to where Whitfield was preaching at the courthouse. He walked away towards his shop in Market Street until he could no longer hear Whitefield distinctly.

When he got to that point he estimated his distance from Whitefield and calculated the area of a semicircle centered on Whitefield. Allowing two square feet per person, he computed that Whitefield could be heard by over thirty thousand people in the open air!

I rather suspect that not all 5000 were hearing everything Jesus said all the time.

Some may have been gathering in little groups to discuss among their friends what they had heard.

And it is interesting that Mark notes only the men. Matthew tells us that there were also women and children in Jesus’s audience. So the total was more than 5000.

B. Isn’t it curious how Jesus answered the disciples’ suggestion that he dismiss the crowd? He said, “You give them something to eat.”

Jesus had decided what he was going to do. Maybe he was teasing them. Maybe he was trying to keep them guessing what might happen next.

Jesus’s disciples were used to surprises. They were also used to doing what Jesus told them to do.

So when Jesus told them to get the people to sit down in groups of 50 and 100, they followed his instructions—even though they must have wondered greatly what Jesus had in mind to do.

I have always wondered how the disciples organized the people into these groups.

But a few years ago a missionary from India showed us pictures of a big gathering of tribes-people in the mountains of north India.

At this gathering—which numbered in the hundreds—the leaders stationed women with rods at the entrances to the area. As the people came through, the women would count them off, and when they got to a certain number, they would drop their rods and send a group of people off to find a place to sit together.

In this way they organized the audience and could know how many were in attendance.

IV. Notice what Jesus did next.

A. After the people had arranged themselves on the green grass, Jesus took the loaves and the fishes and looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves.

As Jesus looked up, he directed their thoughts toward God, who is the giver of all that is good.

I believe he was also holding a loaf up also, just as your pastor or priest may do when you have communion at your church.

B. Then Jesus began breaking the bread and handing it out to his disciples to distribute. We don’t know how the bread was multiplied. We can only imagine. But it proved to be enough for everyone to eat his or her fill.

CONCLUSION

Here are four important lessons this story teaches us.

1. The first lesson: Jesus works through people.

He didn’t make bread out of thin air. He didn’t turn stones into bread.

John tells us that Andrew found a boy in the crowd who had a lunch of five barley loaves (barley was the grain the poor used) and two small fishes. In those days the poor people ate little pickled or salted fish as an appetizer with their bread. These would have been what we call “sardines” or “pickled herring.”

So Jesus used this little lunch, intended for one small boy’s meal to feed the crowd.

Maybe you think you don’t have much. Give what you have to God. He may surprise you what he does with your offering—whether it is money or time, or effort or getting out and taking a chance.

When we get to heaven we will be surprised at what a difference our small gifts have made.

So Jesus used materials supplied by the boy. And he used his disciples to pass out the food.

This is the first lesson: Jesus uses his people to do his work in the world. You and I as Christian believers are partners with God in bringing his love into our world.

Someone saw suffering in the world and cried out to God, “God, why don’t you do something?”

And God said, “I did do something. I made you!”

Sympathy is five loaves and two fishes in your basket.

Compassion is giving what you have in acts of helpfulness, kindness, and self-denial.

The love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay.

Love isn’t love ‘till you give it away.

2. The second lesson: The twelve baskets full of leftovers impress us with the abundance of God’s gifts.

You remember the story of the wedding at Cana, when Jesus turned water into wine.

Jesus didn’t just make enough wine for that feast. He made six jars of wine, and each jar held 20-30 gallons!

That blessed newlywed couple had enough wine to last for months. It was probably their best wedding gift!

That’s Jesus’s specialty: to give us more than we can expect. Jesus said of his followers, “I am come that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

I know—some of you aren’t feeling that you are living abundantly right now. Jesus warned us that in the world we would have tribulation. Don’t expect that your life will always be running over with blessings.

But if you are living for Jesus, you will someday look back and see that it was an abundant life. And if Jesus is truly your Lord, you have experienced some of that already.

3. The third lesson: Jesus is the Bread of Life.

Each of Jesus’s miracles is an acted-out parable. That is why John’s gospel calls them always “signs.”

Jesus opens the eyes of the blind, and says, “I am the light of the world.”

He tells a paralyzed man, “Arise and walk.” And shows us that he is the one who frees us from our bondage to sin.

He raises his friend Lazarus from the grave and says, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.”

He casts out demons and shows us his power over the Evil One.

He stills the storm on the lake, and demonstrates that he is with us in the storms of life.

He multiplies a boy’s little lunch to feed more than 5000 people and says, “I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never be hungry.”

4. The fourth lesson: This picnic on the grass in Galilee prefigures the heavenly banquet we will all enjoy in Glory.

Because whatever else heaven will be, it will be a great feast, which we will sit down to with Jesus, our Savior; and our friends; and all God’s children; along with the saints and angels; and it will be like a wonderful banquet.

Now that’s something to look forward to, isn’t it?

Philippians 1:6: God Won’t Give Up on You.

INTRODUCTION

My favorite of all St. Paul’s letters that are included in our Bible is his letter to the church at Philippi.

Philippi was one of the first cities in Europe that Paul visited. Philippi is in Greece.

During Paul’s first visit, he and his missionary partner Silas were arrested, stripped, whipped with rods, and thrown into prison.

How they got out of that prison is an exciting story. I will tell you about that another time. But if you don’t want to wait, you can read all about it in Acts, chapter 16.

After Paul and Silas were released from prison they left Philippi, but the believers in Philippi never forgot them.

The Philippian Christians were some of Paul’s greatest supporters. They prayed for him and sent him gifts of money to help him with his work for God.

His letter to the Philippians was written to thank them for their generosity.

At the beginning of his letter he says, “I thank God every time I think of you.” Here’s  the way he begins his letter:

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,

To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi,

with the overseers and deacons:

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I thank my God every time I remember you,

constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you,

because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.

I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.

Wouldn’t you like to be on St. Paul’s daily prayer list?

Paul was a great man of prayer and in his prayers he named people—lots of people—including some of his friends at Philippi.

When he writes, “…because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now,” he is thanking them for their prayers and their financial support of his work from the first day that church met and in the ten or so years after he had left.

But then comes the part I want to talk about this afternoon. He writes, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.”

I. Paul had hundreds of friends in many, many cities in which he had preached and founded churches. Paul often thought about his friends who were far away—friends whom he hadn’t seen for years. Most of them he would never see again on this earth.

A. Paul was often anxious about his new converts. Sometimes they disappointed him.

Some of the new Christians would go on well for a time and then drift away from the Lord.

It was difficult to live for Jesus. There were many hardships and temptations for new believers. Some of the friends, whom he had won to Jesus, disappointed him.

He wrote in a letter to another church: “Examine yourselves to see whether you are still living in the faith” (2 Corinthians 13:5).

To some Christian believers who had disappointed him, he wrote: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel” (Galatians 1:6).

B. But others of his spiritual children were friends to the end. Paul wasn’t anxious about his friends in Philippi.

He committed them to God, confident that they would keep on in the faith to the end of the road. That is why he wrote that he was confident that God, who had begun a good work in them, would bring it to completion.

There are two ways to look at Paul’s words:

1. He was telling them that as a church he was persuaded that they would continue faithful to Jesus, even until they meet Jesus in glory.

2. But his words can also be taken as assurance to the individual believers in that church fellowship, that they will continue faithful to Christ until they meet him in glory.

Today we will take it in the second sense and see in it a promise to each of us. We may desert God, but God will never desert us.

II. It is not automatic that everyone who responds to God’s call in the gospel will continue on the path of obedience and faith.

A. Jesus told a parable about this. He said that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a sower who went into his field to sow seed. Some fell on the path and was eaten by birds. Some fell on stony ground, and sprouted but withered and died. Some fell among thorny weeds and, although it germinated and grew, was finally choked out by the weeds. And some fell on good soil and made an abundant harvest.

Some of the new believers were like the seed that fell on stony ground, and germinated quickly and just as quickly died. Others were like seed that fell on ground among weed seeds that germinated and finally choked out the new plants. Jesus said that the weeds were like the pleasures, and cares, and riches of the world that sometimes choke out the Word of God in our hearts.

By this Jesus taught his disciples that there would be many disappointments.

Some seemingly promising believers drop out along the way.

I have seen this several times in my life. Friends who loved Jesus have lost interest in the things of God and their faith has withered. They have forsaken Christ.

B. So when I read these words, “ I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ,” I take it as a promise that God will never let me go, but will hold me in his grip, all the way, even to the very end

Sometimes older believers worry: “What if I become forgetful?” “What if I become confused?” “What if the pain becomes so great I can’t even pray?”

A Norwegian pastor named Ole Hallesby wrote this in his book on prayer:

“When I stand at the bedside of friends who are struggling with death, it is blessed to be able to say to them, ‘Do not worry about the prayers that you cannot pray. You yourself are a prayer to God at this moment. All that is within you cries out to him. And he hears all the pleas that your suffering soul and body are making to him with groanings which cannot be uttered. But if you should have an occasional restful moment, thank God that you already have been reconciled to him, and that you are now resting in the everlasting arms.’” (Ole Hallesby, Prayer, p149)

When you are discouraged, try, as you are able, to think of yourself resting in the powerful arms of Jesus.

He is with you, even if you do not feel him to be with you.

When you become anxious, try to remember that when you pass through that door that leads from this world to the world to come, you will fall into the arms of your Lord Jesus.

III. So what is the work that God will bring to completion at the day of Jesus Christ?

A. We will become like Jesus—not, of course, that we will be able to work miracles or walk on water—but that we will be good—through and through—like Jesus is.

Paul wrote to some of his friends: “I am in pain until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19).

When Christ is formed in us—we will have tender hearts…humble minds…generous souls…

We will have unwearied forbearance toward the faults of others.

We will be quick to help and slow to criticize.

We will rejoice in our hope, be patient in tribulation, and be constant in prayer (Romans 12:12).

You are thinking: “I have been working on all these things all my long life and I still fall short.”

That is where “the day of Jesus Christ” comes in.

B. Our text says, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

The “Day of Jesus Christ” is the day of your resurrection in glory.

God doesn’t expect us to become suddenly perfect; he only expects that we will keep making progress.

This verse teaches us that God will complete our sanctification and make us fit to live in glory with the saints and angels.

Someday our remaking will be complete.

We will love others as they ought to be loved.

We will love our Lord Jesus as we always wished we could.

We will trust him completely.

C. The story is told of a monk who lived in a monastery high on a mountain. One day he descended to the village below, and a peasant ran up to him and said, “Oh, Father, surely yours must be the best of all lives, living so close to God. Tell me, what do you do up there?”

After a thoughtful pause, the monk replied, “What do we do? Well, I’ll tell you. We fall down and we get up. We fall down and we get up.”

CONCLUSION

I have told you about my friend Jim, the ex-convict I became acquainted with when I conducted a Bible study in the Mt. Pleasant prison back in the 1970s.

Jim and his wife Ginny are still dear friends of ours. We talked to Jim and Ginny on the phone just last Sunday.

Jim was a hard-core professional criminal. He was good at what he did, but he was also a drunk. So he kept getting caught.

He had been arrested something over 40 times. He had been locked up nine times.

Jim finally became so discouraged about his failures and the sorrow he had brought into so many lives that he tried to kill himself—twice.

But he failed, and finally, in his despair, he turned to Christ.

During his last months in prison Jim was an outstanding Christian. I met him about three months after his conversion.

When he was finally released from prison—about 1979, we baptized him in the lake in a park in Mt. Pleasant.

Jim had a bright testimony. He had a great story, and many wanted to hear it. So he traveled around telling his story about how God had saved him from sin and despair.

He tells about how one day, when he was on his way to a church to speak, the thought entered his mind: “The Lord is really lucky to have me!”

That thought was the beginning of his downfall.

He began to get proud—and careless. Saddest of all, he began to drink again.

In a drunken rage, he attacked a man, and came close to killing him.

So he was arrested again and locked up for the tenth time—this time in the state prison in Minnesota at Stillwater.

He sat in his prison cell in deep depression. It was now the 10th time he had been locked up. He had broken his wife’s heart. He had broken his son’s heart.

His life was in ruins. He was so despondent he couldn’t pray.

He told me that every day the book cart would come into the tank in the county jail.

Jim would look at those Gideon Bibles at the end of the cart.

“Every day,” he said, “those Bibles would stare at me, and every day I would turn away because I was so convicted and depressed. I thought God had given up on me.”

But one day the book cart came in and he knew he had to look at those Bibles.

He pulled out one of those Bibles from the book cart.

Jim  says,

“I’ll never forget that moment. I went and picked up a Bible and just opened it—I don’t recommend that as a practice, but that time that’s what I did—I just opened the Bible and put my hand down and it was Philippians 1:6: ‘I am sure of this one thing, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.’ I took that as a message from God. God seemed to say, ‘Hey, you screwed up. That’s exactly right. Everything you feel about yourself is legitimate and valid, but, hey, you don’t know me very well. I started something with you and I’m going to finish it. I’m going to carry it on until Jesus comes back.’” 

Although Jim took it to heart that God wasn’t deserting him, he couldn’t overcome his shame.

He was back in prison and knew he was facing a long prison term. He knew he was going to have to start over. It wasn’t easy.

He prayed over and over again the prayer of confession—Psalm 51. That’s the one that begins:

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love.

According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.”

And gradually Jim came to the assurance that God had forgiven him.

That was over 35 years ago.

I know this story is true because I knew Jim. And I knew people who knew him before he met Christ.

When I talked to Jim last Sunday, I laughed and told him, “I still use you as a sermon illustration.”

Jim was finally released about 35 years ago and has lived for God ever since.

He has worked steadily, been a good husband and father.

He was active in his union and in the neighborhood association.

He is an elder in his church.

He has a ministry helping ex-convicts.

He and his wife Ginny brought homeless ex-convicts into their home to help them get back on their feet.

A woman ex-convict he and Ginny helped, whose parents have died, calls Jim and Ginny “Mother” and “Dad.” Her children call Jim and Ginny their grandpa and grandma.

Jim and Ginny are old now. They live in a facility like Village Place. They attend a Bible study there.

Life has been good for Jim—because God didn’t give up on him.

And God won’t give up on you or me either.

He who began a good work in us will bring it to completion in the day of Jesus Christ.

When you are discouraged, don’t give up. God is with you. He’ll never let you go.

2 Timothy 1:3-5: A Remarkable Mother and Grandmother

INTRODUCTION

Karl Barth was perhaps the greatest theologian of the 20th Century. He was a man of immense learning. He was a master of Greek and Hebrew and whatever the great Christian thinkers had written since the time of Christ until the present.

Dr. Barth wrote shelves of books that students who want to be pastors diligently study to learn the deep things of the faith.

Once a skeptic asked Dr. Barth how he could be sure that the Gospel was true. The great Dr. Barth said, “Because my mother told me.”

This doesn’t mean that in the course of time Dr. Barth didn’t find out that some things his mother had told him were mistaken.

It doesn’t mean either that he was content all his life with the knowledge of God that he learned from his mother.

Surely when Karl Barth said that he had become convinced of the truth of the gospel by his mother, he meant that his that his mother planted the seed of faith and that there was nothing as important as his mother’s influence in his coming to faith.

Today is Mother’s Day, and since we have in our little congregation here a good numbers of mothers, I decided to talk about the importance of what you have done in passing the faith on to the next generation.

But even if you’re not a mother, you also have probably also had a role in passing your faith along to younger people.

Some of you are favorite aunts who had a big influence on the spiritual development of nieces and nephews. Some of you have taught Sunday school. Some of you have taught in the public schools. Others of you have had other opportunities to pass along your faith.

I once knew an elderly woman who never had children, but she taught Sunday school for years, and kept in touch with her former students in their later lives. She was, in a sense, the spiritual mother for many young people.

Several years ago there was a woman named Evie here at Village Ridge. She had given birth to two still-born children, and a sadness in her life was that she never had a child in her home. But she told me about a little boy in her church who came to love her and always sat with her in church. Who knows how much Evie contributed to that boy’s spiritual well-being?

St. Paul’s the last letter was written from prison to his younger friend Timothy. In it he includes these words:

 “I thank God whom I serve with a clear conscience, as did my fathers, when I remember you constantly in my prayers. As I remember your tears, I long night and day to see you, that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and now, I am sure dwells in you” (2 Timothy 1:3-5).

I. This is what we know about Timothy’s background.

A. Timothy was the child of a mixed marriage. His mother was Jewish and his father was a Greek.

In Acts 16 we learn that Timothy met St. Paul during his second missionary journey through Asia Minor—the country we now call Turkey.

Paul and Silas were journeying through Asia Minor—modern Turkey—on Paul’s second missionary journey when they came to Lystra

At Lystra there was a young man named Timothy. Timothy was the child of a Jewish woman who was a believer, and he had a Greek father.

We learn nothing more about Timothy’s Greek father. He may have been dead. He may have deserted the family. He may have been around but was not interested in Christianity. Maybe he was a believer but not as strong in his faith as his wife and mother-in-law.

This was Paul’s second visit to Timothy’s hometown of Lystra.

There had been a lot of excitement when Paul had visited Lystra three or four years before.

At that time Paul and his companion Barnabas had healed a crippled man who had never walked.

The townspeople were so impressed that they thought Paul and Barnabas were gods come to visit them. Paul they called Hermes, and Barnabas they called Zeus.

But when the apostles refused to be worshiped, the crowds turned against Paul and Barnabas. They stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city—apparently dead.

But Paul wasn’t dead. We read that when the other believers surrounded Paul, he got up and went back into the city. We don’t read of anything else he did in Lystra at that time.

Maybe Timothy had learned about Jesus during that earlier visit.

But anyway, when Paul returned to Lystra, we read that he found a young disciple named Timothy.

B. Timothy knew the scriptures. He had the background he needed to become an apostle and companion of St. Paul as a missionary.

Timothy’s teachers seem to have been his mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois.

In the same letter Paul writes to Timothy: “From childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings (that means our Old Testament) that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15).

Timothy’s mother and grandmother had not only explained the truth about God but they had lived the truth.

So when Paul and Silas came to town preaching the gospel, Timothy quickly understood how Jesus fulfilled the promises of the Old Testament scriptures he had learned from his mother and grandmother.

In Paul’s letters included in our Bibles, Paul mentions Timothy as co-author of six of them. Two of the letters from Paul in our New Testament are written to Timothy. Timothy was one of St. Paul’s most important co-workers.

II. But my purpose this afternoon isn’t to talk about Timothy. I want to talk about Timothy’s mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois because of the important part mothers and grandmothers play in passing on the faith.

A. Every child’s first teacher is his or her mother. Some of the rabbis insisted that girls should be given a basic education—not because they thought that as women they needed the knowledge found in books. No, they wanted mothers to have learning so that they could give their sons a head start in learning even before they started school.

My father was anxious that his children would learn from books, and he was the authority on everything in our family.

But Mother was the best teacher because she had patience and took time to listen to us. She showed us with her life what it meant to love Jesus.

My purpose today is to impress on you who were mothers—or teachers or favorite aunts—how important you have been in the spiritual formation and success of the young people who came after you.

Very few people come to faith by listening to sermons, or by learning theology or by reading books or by hearing arguments.

Even evangelists such as Billy Graham will admit that most of the people who find Jesus through their evangelistic campaigns were invited or brought to their meetings by friends or neighbors or family members.

We come to faith mostly through our relationships with others.

We see the gospel lived in lives of those we love—and we come to share their faith.

And we mature and continue in our faith in the community of believers. (That’s why it’s so important to go to church.)

And for many of us—as for Timothy—the one who first drew us to Jesus was our mother.

Four pastors were talking about their favorite translations of the Bible. One pastor liked the King James translation best, another liked the RSV, and another said he liked the NIV.

The last pastor spoke up and said, “I like my mother’s translation best.”

“Oh,” they said, “Your mother made a translation of the Bible?”

“Yes,” the last pastor said, “she translated the Bible into her daily life and through it I came to faith.”

A few months ago the Christian Century magazine invited some noted Christian leaders to share the stories of important events in their faith journeys

Michael Jinkins, president of Louisville Theological Seminary, wrote of how his theological education began on the way home from church one day when he asked his mother about the odd wording of a Bible verse the preacher had preached on.

The verse was Matthew 6:34: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

The odd wording of the verse—as it is in the King James Version—puzzled the child, but he knew it must be important because it was printed in red in his Bible.

His mother said, “Hmmm, I guess it means that Jesus doesn’t want us to worry about the future. There’s enough for us to worry about today.”

Jinkins writes, “That was a lesson my mother, a child of the Great Depression, knew by heart. She then invited me to read the passage with her in the context of the whole text, and gradually its meaning became clear.”

What stayed with Jinkins from that conversation was the natural way his mother opened up to him the meaning of scripture, beginning with the words, “Hmmmm, I guess it means…”

Jinkins says he still uses that line often in explaining things to his seminary students.

B. But our opportunities don’t stop with our children. Sometimes children wander from the faith, and grandmothers or grandfathers bring their grandchildren to faith.

In every church we see grandmothers and grandfathers bringing their grandchildren to church.

In our church we sit on the second row from the front. On the other side of the aisle a grandmother and grandfather sit with their grandchildren.

The parents of the children have begun to come to church, but for years it was the grandparents who brought the grandchildren to church while the children’s parents stayed home.

A pastor named Fred Craddock tells about a young woman who came to his church and told him this story. It was during her freshman year in college, she had been a failure in her classes, she wasn’t having dates, and she didn’t have as much money as the other students. She was lonely and depressed and homesick.

She told Pastor Craddock that one Sunday afternoon she went to the river near the campus and climbed up on the rail of the bridge and was looking into the dark water below. She was so discouraged she wanted to die.

“But,” she said, “for some reason I thought of a line I had heard somewhere. It was, ‘Cast all your care upon him for he cares for you.’”

She said, “So I stepped back—and here I am.”

Pastor Craddock asked her, “Where did you learn that line?”

The girl didn’t know.

Craddock asked her, “Do you go to church?”

She said, “No…well, when I visited my grandmother in the summers, we went to Sunday school and church...”

Pastor Craddock just said, “Ah…”

Even though she had gone to church and Sunday school only during the summers when she had visited her grandmother, that verse from First Peter—“Cast all your care upon him, for he cares for you”—had stuck in her mind and saved her life.

Our pastor once asked a high-school age young man in his congregation: “Who was your role model for a faithful Christian?”

The young man named a person he really looked up to.

The odd thing, the pastor said, was that neither the young man nor the older Christian really knew each other.

We can influence younger believers even though we don’t really know them and don’t imagine that they are looking up to us as examples.

This has been true in my life. People have been an inspiration to me who never knew it. Maybe you have been an influence on some young person’s life and never knew it.

CONCLUSION

Your children are grown now and so are your grandchildren. But your job is not done.

You can still pray for your children and grandchildren, as I’m sure Eunice and Lois prayed for Timothy when he was away on his missionary journeys with the great Apostle Paul.

Through your love and faith, you can still be an example that draws them to God.

And even when you are in glory with Jesus, your influence will still linger on and bless them.

Sometimes our children don’t seem to respond to our efforts to draw them to Christ. But don’t give up. You don’t know the seeds you have planted in their hearts. Maybe they believe more than you think—or more than they will admit.

When we moved from our house to Village Place, we had a lot of fun passing our possessions on to our children and grandchildren. Our granddaughter Megan got the piano and our grandson-in-law Zach got the woodworking tools. Our grandson Caleb got my grandpa’s gold pocket watch and the Indian axe head Charlotte’s grandfather had found on the farm. Peter got the chiming wall clock that I made and was so proud of. Our daughter Susan got the garden cart and the gardening tools, and our granddaughter Nicole got the cedar chest Charlotte inherited from her mother. It was fun to find homes for our treasures.

But the most precious possession we can pass on is our faith.

And we pass on our faith—not only by teaching about God but by living the life of faith.

Words are necessary, but words don’t count for much without the deeds that illustrate their truth.

That’s how Timothy’s mother and grandmother passed their faith on to Timothy—and that’s how we pass our faith on to our children and grandchildren.

Now that’s something to think about today on Mother’s Day.