St John the Beloved
Sermon and teaching audio from St John Church in Cincinnati Ohio.
St John the Beloved
Famous Last Words
A letter written under the shadow of the scaffold can change how we live under everyday shadows. Today we walk through 2 Timothy 1:1–12 as Paul urges Timothy—and us—to fan the flame, resist shame, and remember the holy calling rooted in grace, not performance. We explore how legacy shapes courage, how spiritual friendship interrupts loneliness, and how the gospel is first an announcement of what God has already done: in Christ, death is abolished and immortality is brought to light.
We share stories that make these truths tangible—from a chaplain’s front-row seat to the brevity of life to the surprising power of small encouragements that rebuild community. You’ll hear why Paul’s affection for Timothy models healthy, open friendship, and how recalling your spiritual family tree can steady you when your faith feels like dying embers. We unpack the original meaning of “gospel” in the Roman world, then apply it to modern doubts, cultural pressure, and the quiet temptation to keep our beliefs hidden. This is not a call to bravado but to faithful courage fueled by the Spirit of power, love, and self-control.
Most of all, we center on Paul’s anchor: I know whom I have believed. Not just knowing about Christ, but knowing Christ—through Scripture, prayer, the church’s care, and the Spirit’s inner witness. If you’ve been tired, ashamed, or unsure how to keep going, this conversation offers clarity and practical next steps to guard the gift and pass the torch. If the message helps you, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs courage, and leave a review so others can find it. What reminder are you taking into the week?
As Pastor Billy said, we are in a different book this morning. We are in the book of 2 Timothy, and I invite you to follow along in your bulletin as we read from 2 Timothy 1, verses 1 to 12. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, please stand, according to the promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus. To Timothy, my beloved child, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I thank God whom I serve as did my ancestors with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. As I remember your tears, I long 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 as well. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God gave us a spirit, not of fear, but a power and love and self-control. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher, an apostle, and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do. 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 what has been entrusted to me. Amen. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of our God stands forever. Thanks be to God. Would you join me in prayer one more time before we uh hear more about this word? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we thank you for your servant, the Apostle Paul. And we thank you for your spirit preserving these words so that we might be encouraged, sanctified, and made to look more like your Son, Jesus Christ. We pray that in this time that you would give us ears to hear what your word has to say, and that you would give us eyes to behold the beauty of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And we ask this all in his name. Amen. Well, you can see in our bulletin that the title of my sermon today is Famous Last Words. And I don't know if you've ever done a Google search of famous last words, but I did this week, and I'd like to share a few of my favorite that I discovered. Civil War General John Sedgwick's last words were Don't worry, boys, they couldn't hit an elephant at this distance. You can figure, figure it out for yourself what happened next. Nostradamus, the famous predictor of future events, made a final prediction. He said, Tomorrow at sunrise I shall no longer be here. And he was right. Those are some funny ones, but there are some that are more serious, more meaningful. Leonardo da Vinci said, his last words were, I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have. Now, if that isn't a lesson in the futility of labor under the sun, I don't know what is. You know, these last thoughts or ideas that you would want to communicate before you pass on into eternity. As many of you know, I work as a chaplain right now in a senior home, and so I have probably more than most a front row seat to the brevity of human life. And I also know that not many people give much thought, honestly, to that idea of their last words. Now we don't have the Apostle Paul's actual last words, but this book, 2 Timothy, is really the closest that we get. This is Paul's last letter chronologically in the New Testament. It was written shortly before his death, presumably at the hand of the Emperor Nero. And as one commentator put it, this book was written in the shadow of the scaffold. It was written in the shadow of the scaffold with his death impending. And it is written to his spiritual son and protege, Timothy, who was a pastor in the Greek city of Ephesus. And in this passage we just read in verse 6, Paul writes these words to Timothy. He says, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power, love, and self-control. And some other translations will write something like, Set ablaze the gift of God, or kindle afresh the gift of God. And it's this idea, if you've ever been around a bonfire or a campfire, when the fire has burned through most of the wood, so maybe there's just a few embers left at the bottom of the ash heap, and you maybe take a piece of cardboard and blow it, and you're wanting that fire to spring back up again, to reignite, to kindle afresh. And that's what Paul wants Timothy to do with this gift that he has. And we're not exactly sure what Paul means by this gift, but it's somehow related to Timothy's call to preach the gospel. And it applies to all of us here who have received various gifts from God, whether that's service or hospitality or teaching. These are all gifts, skills that God gives us that we might spread the message of this gospel, this good news that we talk about all the time. And just like there was for Timothy in his day, there are pressures and temptations to let that flame, that energy to pass the gospel on fade away. So Paul, riding in the shadow of the scaffold, as he's preparing for his death, he wants to see the torch of the gospel passed on. He wants Timothy to keep up the good work. And that's the main thing that I want us to take from this room as we go back home, as we go back to our workplaces, as we do whatever God has for us to do this week. I want us to keep up the good work of the good news. Keep up the good work of the good news. And there are at least four ways that Paul shares that we can do this. And they all involve remembering or being reminded of certain things. That word remember or remind is repeated in our passage today. And the first way that we keep up the good work of the good news is we remember the legacy of faith. We remember our legacy of faith. In verses 3 through 5, Paul says to Timothy, I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and now I am sure dwells in you as well. Paul is reminding Timothy that he and Paul are part of this story of faith that didn't begin with them, even as it won't end with them. Paul in that verse recalls his ancestors, who he says served God with a clear conscience, and Paul sees himself in that line, that legacy of faith. And then he reminds Timothy more immediately of the faith of his mother and grandmother, who were used by God to plant the seeds of faith in Timothy. And so another way that we can say this is that Paul is encouraging Timothy to look back as he prepares to look forward to the future. And that's something that we all need to do at times. See, we draw strength from remembering this legacy of faith by remembering that our faith doesn't exist in a vacuum. And if you think about it, this rediscovery of legacy, it's in a lot of our cultural stories. You know, you know, Luke Skywalker learns that he's not just some orphan kid from Tatooine, right? He learns that his father was a Jedi, that he's part of this bigger story that's going on in the whole galaxy. Or Harry Potter realizes that he's not just an orphan boy living in his uncle and aunt's cupboard. He's a famous wizard. You know, there's this rediscovery of a legacy that was forgotten. We too are part of a legacy of faith, you know, both in this big historical sense, but also in a personal sense. And so, on the one hand, it's important to study church history, to know the stories of our mothers and fathers and the faith. But who is in your spiritual family tree as you look back, as you remember who God used in your life? You know, for a lot of us, honestly, like Timothy, it could be this amazing legacy of godly women who poured into us. You know, from what we can tell, Timothy didn't have a Christian father. It was his mother and grandmother who planted those seeds. Now, maybe you didn't grow up in a home that talked about these things, that talked about Jesus, but you came to faith perhaps through a spiritual mother or a spiritual father or spiritual brothers and sisters who displayed the love of Christ to you. And that was used by God to change you. You know, don't miss the fact that even though Paul is not Timothy's biological father, he calls him my son in the faith. You know, we have that opportunity, that same opportunity, to be spiritual fathers and mothers or spiritual children of those in our church. Now, this is connected, this idea of remembering our legacy of faith, it's connected to the next way in which we keep up the good work, which is remember you are not alone. Remember that you are not alone. And so if remembering the legacy of faith is about recalling the past, this is about remembering where you are right now. Remembering the present. And I want you to hear in this passage the love that Paul and Timothy have for each other. As we've already said, Paul calls Timothy his beloved son. It says that he gives thanks for Timothy as he prays for him. Paul says he remembers Timothy's tears. This is probably tears of sorrow as they are parting from each other. And we see the deep love, the affection that they have for each other. Paul anticipates joy when he sees Timothy again. He longs for that. You know, it's it's it's noteworthy and maybe striking for us culturally how openly affectionate these two men are to each other. Uh but at the least we see the importance here of true spiritual friendship. True spiritual friendship. So even though that Paul and Timothy are far from each other, Paul and Timothy are still united in their affection towards each other. You know, these these kinds of friendships, these spiritual friendships, they're rare at this time. It feels increasingly hard to develop these kinds of open and affectionate relationships with others. You know, where people know us and and love us at this level. You know, this this kind of relationship that leads to stirring up good works in each other, as the author of Hebrews puts it. And uh it's challenging even in the church. And there's there's all sorts of things that are working against having these kinds of relationships. Uh we hear all the time how isolated and lonely that people are feeling in this day and age, even with all the different tools we have that supposedly connect us, you know, via social media. Uh, we're we struggle with loneliness. Now, I'm not gonna give you a grand strategy for how to just you know instantaneously develop these kinds of relationships, and you know, that's a good uh good thing to talk to your leadership about, you know, what are opportunities that you have to develop those kinds of relationships. Uh but one thing that I can leave you with, you know, as my my wife loves to tell our sons as they are in school and meeting friends, she says, if you want to have good friends, be a good friend. That's a good way to start. And so if you long to see that kind of relationship for yourself, initiate that. You know, it could be as simple as sending someone a text and saying, you know, I noticed this in you, and I was encouraged by that. Or, you know, if someone shares a need in community group, you can follow up and say, hey, I've been I've been praying for you, I've been thinking about that, how is that going for you? Uh these are just little ways that we can begin to uh to cultivate these kinds of spiritual friendships. Because remember, when we isolate ourselves and we take away the sense of community, that's when we get uh that ember, that that ember starts to die out. And it becomes increasingly hard to keep up this calling to uh do the good work of the good news. And then the third way that we can keep up the good work, you know, not only do we remember our legacy, not only do we remember that we're not alone, but simply remember the good news. Remember what that is, remember why you're working in the first place. It's really the whole point of everything. And Paul says uh in our passage, he says, Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God. And Paul, as he as he does so often in his letters, he he reminds his readers what the gospel is. You know, he goes on to say uh immediately after in verse eight, God saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ before the ages began, and which has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. That is a summary of this gospel that Timothy and we are called to bear witness to. And again, the word gospel, it's a it's a churchy word. You know, we've heard it over and over and over, and it's it's so familiar to us that sometimes we forget what this word actually means? What did it mean in its original context? Well, that word gospel was originally a technical term in the Roman Empire that meant something majorly good for the empire had happened. Uh so if a new Caesar was born, or if there had been some major military victory, there would be messengers sent throughout the empire to say, listen to the good news. This wonderful thing has happened, pay attention. And what that teaches us is, you know, what when we usually think of the gospel, we we we often think of what my part is in the gospel, that I have I'm believing the gospel, I have to accept the gospel. And that's true. But but before the gospel is a message we believe in, it's something that God has already done. The gospel is something that God has already done in human history. It's a fact that God has sent his son, Jesus, to act in human history, that he has called us to his purpose, that he's given us a salvation that's not based on our works, but on his grace. Now, Timothy has heard all this before. You know, this is nothing new to Timothy, so why is Paul telling him again? Well, we get a clue when we read that Paul says, Don't be ashamed about the testimony, testimony of our Lord, or of me, his prisoner. You see, there is a there is a constant temptation uh to be ashamed uh or embarrassed about this good news. Because, you know, if we're honest, to a lot of our neighbors, a lot of our friends, a lot of our family, it just it just seems crazy. It just seems crazy at times. Um I recently uh re-watched a movie with my boys that I'd watched as a kid called Muppets in Space. I don't know if anyone's ever remember that good old 90s movie. Um but basically this movie is about Gonzo. You know, remember Gonzo the Muppet with the funky nose? So all of the other Muppets, you know, they're they're a kind of animal, right? There's Kermit the frog, there's Miss Piggy, there's uh Fozzie the bear. But Gonzo, he he's a whatever. You know, we don't really know what he is, and he doesn't know what he is. Uh turns out Gonzo is an alien. And in the movie, his alien family starts communicating to him in weird ways. So they start communicating to Gonzo through his breakfast cereal. Uh they like struck strike him with lightning on the top of his house and download a message into his brain. Uh they start speaking to him through a sandwich. You know, and and of course, as he as he tells all his friends about this, they think he's crazy, right? It just seems ridiculous. And they don't believe Gonzo until his family actually shows up in the giant spaceship. Now that's a silly story, but doesn't it sometimes feel like that? Like you're you're you're trying to convince people of this amazing news that's amazing to you, but to other people, it's just crazy. You know, dead people do not rise, get come back from the dead. You know, to speak about one aspect of our faith that seems crazy to people. You know, and uh uh especially when when you feel the darkness around you, you know, when you're when you're walking with people who, in other senses, are living under the shadow of the scaffold, who are walking in the valley of the shadow of death, it's it's hard to talk about life and hope in a culture of hopelessness. And uh as a chaplain, I've I've worked in places with a lot of death, and it can, for me, even as a believer, sometimes feel hollow to talk about these truths. And that brings us back to why we need this these constant reminders. We need this constant reminder of remembering the legacy of faith, remembering that today we are not alone, that we have brothers and sisters not only here but around the world who know exactly what we're talking about when we talk about this hope that we have in the gospel of Jesus Christ. But this also leads us into the fourth way that we keep up this good work, and that is remembering in whom you have believed. Remember in whom you have believed. Because Paul says in the last verse of our passage, he says, I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me. Notice what he says. He does not say, I know about the one I've believed. He says, I know whom I have believed. He doesn't just know about this king who has acted in human history, but he knows this king personally. And at the end of the day, when we talk about these truths, what convinces us of their reality, it's not merely reading the right apologetics book, it's not merely getting the right head knowledge or or even talking to the right person. It's what we call the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit. It's the Holy Spirit, God Himself, who gives that personal knowledge of Himself in our souls. It's this spirit that Paul talks about, the spirit of power, love, and self-control. So it's not just about knowing about God, but knowing God. And it's important to remember that this knowledge, this true knowledge of Christ, it's not only available to super Christians, you know, like the Apostle Paul. Uh, it is available to each one of us here. And it doesn't require uh spectacular vision or dream. Uh it only requires that we want that knowledge of Jesus and that we ask for it. We can keep up this good work of the good news because the one who produced the good news is known to us and knows us and is still at work. So, brothers and sisters, keep up the good work of the good news. Draw strength from the past. Remember who God has used to bring you this far. Draw strength from those around you here today, your church family. Take that risk of knowing and being known by each other, encourage each other. Remember this gospel, this torch that you're passing on. Remember that even though to others it seems crazy, but it is the best news in the world. If death has been abolished and immortality has been brought to light through the gospel, what do we really have to be afraid of at the end of the day? And remember, friends, that we not only know about this Jesus, but we know him. He is with us. May the Lord add a blessing to the hearing of his word. Amen.