What Is Your Legacy? (Part 2 of 3)

Every tombstone in a cemetery is a legacy here in 2 Timothy. I don't want to belabor the point. I just want to draw your attention to them, and you can follow this up with your own homework. This is a sort of thumbnail sketch.

It's not an in-depth study. Demas, chapter 4 and verse 10. "'Do your best to come to me quickly,' he says to Timothy, "'for Demas has deserted me. Demas has bailed out on me as well.'" Now, had he bailed out on Christ?

Well, I think probably so. But the inference here is not that so much as it is the sense of personal pain that Paul feels in relationship to the fact that this individual, who was his friend, who was his coworker in the gospel, just left him. And now, when the word Demas comes to mind, the very next word that comes with it, the verb that goes along with the noun, is desertion.

Demas deserted. What about Alexander in verse 14? "'Alexander the metalworker did me a great deal of harm.'" So when he is at work, brings up the picture of Alexander in his mind, it's not a helpful picture, it's a harmful picture.

We don't know what he did to him. Except we know that it was somehow related to the cause of the gospel. It's not a personality issue. It's not that Paul is concerned that, you know, Alexander didn't like his preaching, or didn't think he was that good of a pastor, or didn't like him for some personality venture.

Who cares about that stuff? No, no, he says, Alexander did me a great deal of harm, and you should be on your guard against him, because he strongly opposed the message. That's the issue, you see. Paul's great concern is that the legacy of the gospel will be passed, like the passing of a baton in a relay race, in those, what is it, what do you have, twenty meters there, or fifteen meters in that box?

I don't know what you have. It's a short distance, and you've got to get it out of your hands and into their hands, and if you don't do it then, it doesn't go. Or if you drop it then, it doesn't go.

And there's little time to drop it and pick it up, as many of us have found, to a great disappointment. And when he thought in terms of that, and he brought Alexander's picture up to mind, he said, he harmed me. And what about the crowd in verse 16? And my first defense, no one came to my support. Isn't that a dreadful thing to have in your recollection?

You go back through your journal, as it were, do you keep a journal? You go back in there and you bring pictures to mind, and you say, you know, just when I needed the encouragement, no one came to support me. Just when this guy needed help, no one was there.

Why was that? Because they all united against him. They said, now, don't anybody go and help Paul? And they sent word around, probably not.

I think it's more likely that it happened like this. Everybody sitting there said, someone else will support him. Someone else will do it. Someone else will be there. It's not important that I'm there. Someone else will carry it out.

And the result of thinking like that was that no one supported him. Oh, someone else will go to the service. They don't really need me. Do you realize that every single one of you thinks, someone else will go to the evening service tonight, there'll be nobody at the evening service? So the legacy of this crowd was harmed.

Let's move to the helpful side of the picture, because there is that which is helpful as well. Incidentally, and in passing, another thing that drove this home for me was that last Sunday evening, against my better judgment and allowing my heart to roll my head, I agreed to go and speak in a church on the other side of the country in Stockton-on-Teas, which is actually in Cleveland, England, and it's near Newcastle in Middlesbrough. And I had a man pick me up and drive me to the place. And I got in the car, and there was also a lady with him.

They were at a youth camp, and we drove away from the hotel, and they started to say, and what about your wife, and what about your children? And I had only just come from this side, which is much worse, and I could feel myself just going off and then coming around and not knowing if they'd asked me a question, and just sitting in the silence, hoping that somebody would give me an idea of what was going on. And so eventually I said, you know, I think I'm going to fall asleep.

So I fell asleep and wakened up when I got there, and then I was there, and then I got back in the car and fell asleep and woke up when I got back. And the man, when he shook my hand, he said, it was nice having fellowship with you. But the reason for my journey was to speak in a church where I hadn't been for twenty-nine years. Twenty-nine years. Did you hear the bell ring?

Did you hear the minutes pass? And I went back out of deference to the pastor who had been there, a gentleman by the name of Neville Atkinson, who had been such an encouragement to me as a young man. I used to go there on Saturday night with two of my friends. We had a singing group.

The other two guys could sing before anyone mentions it. And we used to do some things in a youth coffee bar and so on. We used to go there in time for the football results on a Saturday night, soccer results to you, Philistines.

And we used to, I will not forgive you for not watching the World Cup. I'm sorry. I am sorry. And so this church called me and they said, would you come back and speak for us on Sunday night? I said, it would be a great privilege. And I went and I was in the vestry and the fellow said to me, now you don't need to go up into the pulpit. Oh, I said, fine. I said, that's okay. What do you want me to do? He said, well, why don't you just speak from down at the communion table?

I said, I can do that. And I walked out and there was no one there. They had a huge wraparound balcony, totally deserted. They had seats all in three sections down below.

And when I say no one, that is hyperbole. There was a smattering of people there. Oh, I said to myself, what has happened here? This is not Neville's legacy.

Because when we were there 29 years ago, the place was vibrant. And then I found out that after 31 years of ministry, he passed it into the hands of another young man, who in the last two and a half years has singularly decimated the congregation, to the point that it is split and divided and disintegrated. And what I was speaking to was simply a remnant. I don't know his name. And if I knew it, I wouldn't tell you it.

But I do know this, that his legacy is harmful. What about yours? What about mine? What if they wrote our epitaph tonight?

What if we were in Tomorrow Morning's Plain Dealer, in the obits? And you're not gonna waste a lot of money on those things. I told my wife that.

Don't get something, don't get my photograph and stuff in there. Just get a line and a half, just something, you know. Like the lady whose husband died, and she phoned up the newspaper. She didn't want to spend a lot of money on it.

I think she was Scottish. She said, my husband died, I need to put it in the newspaper. So the fellow says, Well, what do you want to put? She said, Put Hamish died. So the guy says, Well, you know, there's a minimum number of words.

I mean, you want to put more than that? She thought about it for a moment. She said, Well, put Hamish died Volvo for sale.

So when they put our sentence and a half in there, or whatever else it is—try and sell a lawnmower at the same time, whatever they do—if there's one summary statement, what will it be, and will it be harmful? Or will it be helpful? Come to the helpful side with me, and I'll go through this quickly.

Helpful. Look at verse 5 of chapter 1. What a helpful legacy was left by Lois and Eunice, the grandmother and the mother Eunice. I can't tell you what a wonderful thing it is to have a godly heritage. We shouldn't think for a moment that Lois and Eunice were self-aware in relationship to this. The sincere faith which lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice. I can't imagine that the grandmother would come over to the house and say, Timothy, now here I am. Your godly granny's here.

Come along, Timothy, and I will expound to you the great wonders of things, because after all, I'm your godly granny. No, I think she was his granny. And his mother? Do you think his mother used to get up in the morning and say, Now come along, Timothy, I'm your godly mother, and I'm here to bestow my heritage upon you? No, she just did the laundry. She just sent him off to school.

She just clipped him around the year. She just did mother things. But down through the corridor of time, as people reflect on it and bring their photographs to recollection, says, You know what?

This was tremendously helpful having this grandmother and having this mom. And some of us haven't had that. But we may have had it in a Sunday school teacher or in a Bible class leader or in someone who was influential like that. And that is our heritage.

And their legacy is wonderful. Another thing that happened to me this past week that all fed like tributaries into the stream in which we are now swimming or drowning, depending on your perspective, was that a lady came to me at the end of one of the talks. And she said to me, You won't know who I am, but I was your Sunday school teacher when you were a wee boy, primary one, first grade. Well, I said, I don't remember you, and I don't remember your name, but I have known all of my life that there were two ladies who taught me in the room that was underneath the platform, because the platform was extremely high. And I said, You know, I only remember two things about that Sunday school.

One is when the big man sat on the children's chairs, and he had no right sitting on these little collapsible chairs, because he collapsed them in a way that they weren't supposed to collapse. He went down like a ton of bricks, and that's one of my vivid memories. I remember dashing over to help him.

No, I don't. I remember just killing myself laughing that this guy just went butt down on the floor. I thought it was one of the best things that had happened in the Sunday school for many a week, because I was really into that Sunday school.

Whoa, yes! And I said, I remember that, and she smiled benignly. And I said, and the other thing I remember is that somehow or another, you two ladies made clear to me one Sunday—and I don't know what day or what date it was—but you made clear to me the issues of the gospel. Because I said it was after your Sunday school class, forty years ago, that I went home to my dad, and I asked him, How old do you have to be to trust Christ?

And I said, The reason I asked my father that question is because of your instruction in that class. She never knew that. And here she was, came to listen to the Bible readings at Keswick, given by some boy that never paid attention in her Sunday school class, how she must have marveled. And under God, I think she went away with a wee bit of a spring in her step, realizing that, again, on another Sunday morning, just like so many of you, with these kids looking here, looking there, poking, pulling pigtails, doing everything, scribbling on the sheets, flicking coins, doing everything at all, she must have gone home and said, Oh, God, don't send me back under the platform again. Just take all those kids away from me.

I can't stand it. And who's to say how many other men in their mid-forties and girls in their mid-forties are walking the path of faith as a result of the legacy? Be encouraged grandmothers. Be encouraged moms.

Be encouraged Sunday school teachers, kindergarten workers, junior choir teachers. Somewhere behind those vacant stairs, God does his work. What about this chap, Onesiphorus, in verse 16? May the LORD show mercy to the house of Onesiphorus. Or maybe it's One Sip Horace, I don't know. He was a guy called Horace, and they said, Would you like a drink? And he said, Just one sip.

And ever after he was known as Onesiphorus. Now, please don't send me letters about this. Cut me a bit of slack. All the wires are not joined up this morning.

See, they weren't joined up the last time we heard you either, but what was your excuse then? But look at this guy Onesiphorus. He often refreshed me, wasn't ashamed of me, searched hard for me, and helped me in all kinds of ways. What a legacy. Often refreshed me, wasn't ashamed of me, searched hard for me, and helped me in all kinds of ways.

I like that, don't you? What about Timothy himself, to whom the letter is written? When Paul writes to the Philippians in 2.20, he says of Timothy, I have no one else like him who takes a genuine interest in your welfare. He's my main man, he says.

That's him when I think of him. That's his legacy. Go back into chapter 4 and look at what we're told of Luke. In contrast to the desertion of Demas, we have the loyalty of Luke in verse 11.

There's no indication here that Luke was a great evangelist or a wonderful Bible teacher. Indeed, the whole inference is that he was none of that, but that he was marked by fidelity, by loyalty, by integrity, by humility, and he had lived his life over the long haul. You see, long after people have forgotten eloquence, and long after they have ceased to read whatever cleverness any of us may have been able to commit to the printed page, long after cleverness and eloquence are gone, human kindness will live on in the lives of people. People remember kindness.

My sister will bear this out. But when our mother died, and all the people sent the notes, you know, with Isaiah 40 on it, and Isaiah 26, 3, and Philippians 4, and John 14, 1–6, all of which was very, very helpful, I don't think any of us remember any of the notes or anything about them. I'll tell you what we do remember. We do remember the lady from around the corner who kept coming back with another pile of freshly completed laundry. And when I think of her, what a legacy!

Don't fall into this trap of thinking, you know, the key to success in the Christian life is being a teacher, is being a front person, is being a notorious person. Just think about your body, think about your renal function, think about your neurological function, think about the double circulatory system of the heart. How much of that is out for public display? None. How vital is it? Crucial.

And all the stuff we fiddled with this morning before we came here is irrelevant in comparison to those hidden functions. Oh, thank God for the hidden heroes of the church. The Lukes! We walked down the street in Keswick, Steve Brady and I, another speaker and a friend over the last—since 1972. And a man stopped us in the street, a small man, and he said he wanted to thank us for the things that we'd shared from the Scriptures. And we thanked him, and we were humbled by his interest, and we asked him what he was doing and why he was there.

And he said, You know, I've been a Baptist minister for the last thirty years. Who knows him? God knows him.

Who knows his work? Well, his congregation and God. And when we walked away, I said to Steve, Doesn't that give you a bit of a chill? He said, What do you mean? I said, Simply this, you know when it says in the Bible, the first will be last, then the last will be first? I said, I get a distinct feeling that those of us who have been given positions of notoriety, limited though they may be, when the final reckoning is squared away in heaven, it's going to be guys like that who'll be up the front of the line, and guys like you and me, Brady, who'll be hanging on the back of the bus. Steve said, You know, I think you're right. Now, our time is gone.

I need to come just to the final thought. But you'll notice that Mark is there, and he's helpful, and Tychicus is there, and he's helpful, and the crowd is there at the end between verse 19 and 21. Priscilla and Aquila and Onesiphorus and Erastus and Trophimus and Eubulus and Pudens. Love the name Pudens, don't you? Whether that was a guy that was really fond of dessert or not, I do not know.

But nevertheless, he's there. Might have been a lady called Pudens. It's a great name, Pudens. You can tell I've really done a lot of in-depth study on this, can't you? Yeah.

So I'm really digging deep into the material. Well, there we have some with a harmful legacy, some with a helpful legacy. The question is, what about you and me? And with this, I draw it to a close.

How are we going to establish this? Number one, determined to live so as to be missed. Determined to live so as to be missed. But to be missed for the right things. To be missed for the right things. Don't let's be missed at meetings, because the meetings go so well without us. People are going, That was a great meeting tonight.

Seemed to go very smoothly. I don't know what the difference was. Oh, yes, I do. He wasn't here. She wasn't here.

You don't want to have people look up cantankerous in the dictionary and your face comes up beside it. Be missed. Live as to be missed. Be missed for kind words, for good deeds, for short notes, for quick telephone calls, for good laughs. Be remembered for humor, happiness.

Do it good like a medicine. Fill your portfolio with this stuff. Who in the world cares about the size of the house, the cubic capacity of the engine of the car, the stock options, glory almost, whatnot? All of that's going in a garage sale. But what will live on in the minds of our kids and our grandkids?

Their kind words, good deeds, short notes, quick calls, good laughs. Don't be seduced into putting all of your treasure in the wrong place. And pass to your children a treasure trove, which is harmful, not helpful. We should determine to live in a way that will be missed when we're gone. That's how you leave a helpful legacy. You're listening to Truth for Life. Alistair Begg will conclude this message tomorrow.

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