2 Timothy 1 verses 3 through 5. These are God's words. I thank God whom I serve with a pure conscience as my forefathers did. As without ceasing I remember you in my prayers night and day. Greatly desiring to see you being mindful of your tears that I may be filled with joy. And I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice. And I am persuaded is in you also. So for the reading of God's inspired and inerrant word. So Paul is thankful for Timothy. He remembers Timothy night and day in prayer. He has good reason in his recent memory of Timothy, as he remembers Timothy to God, to be praying for him. But whenever he prays for him, he's praying to a God who is working in Timothy, and this makes him very thankful. And so here are two things that we are reminded to do with other Christians, and especially with those Christians with whom the Lord has intersected his work in our lives and his work in their lives. And those two things to do is to remember them and to remember them in prayer and to give thanks for them. We know that we are to give thanks for them. because God, whose goodness is their only hope and whose goodness has already begun in them, has done so as part of his work that has been going ever since he's created man and redeemed man. And so he says, I thank God whom I serve with a pure conscience as my fathers did. And then there's the interlude about prayer, and then he comes to the finishing of the idea of why he thanks God when he remembers Timothy in prayer, and that is when I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you. which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also. And there's two lines of thought here about the place that Timothy's faith, this genuine faith that is in Timothy, has in the work of God. And the first is in a line that goes from the fathers to Paul to Timothy. You remember he referred to Timothy in verse 2 as a beloved son, and then he says he thanks God that Timothy has now joined the family business, as it were, because there are fathers that Paul has had in the ministry, he says, whom I serve with a pure conscience as my forefathers did. Now, of course, Paul calls himself the chief of sinners. He remembers where he was and what he was like when the Lord Jesus arrested him from his former life and resurrected him to give him spiritual life and called him to this ministry. And of course, when we read even about Adam the first, of our fathers who believed in the gospel and called his wife Eve out of that faith and the promised son that would come from his wife who is now the mother of the living, or whether we are thinking about Noah or Abram and then Abraham or Isaac and Jacob and so forth, that all of these who came to serve God with a pure conscience did not begin that way. But grace found them. God laid hold of them by grace and gave them spiritual life and called them to be his servants. And it was by God's grace that he has done that for any of them. And now it's by God's grace that Paul serves him with a pure conscience. And in this letter, he's going to be calling Timothy to serve God with a pure conscience. And yet he already sees God at work in Timothy. enabling him to have this pure conscience, and growing him in grace in which he will serve. So that's one reason to thank God for Timothy, because even that good which he now sees in Timothy is not from Timothy. It is from God. It was in the fathers, but it wasn't from the fathers. It was from God in the fathers, it's in Paul, but it certainly was not from Paul. And so as he thinks about, as he remembers what a believer is, this great miracle, this great display of the power and mercy of God. in which the Lord is acting throughout history. He gives thanks for Timothy. And so God has this pattern in redemption and in especially those whom he calls to service in his church, which is everyone to some extent. But of course, when Paul is talking about himself and Timothy, he's talking to about that special call of the gospel minister. But there's not only the pattern of God's powerful working to redeem those whom he uses as ministers in the church, servants in the church, but there's also that covenantal faithfulness of God who says, I will be God to you and to your children after you. And he had said it to Eunice when he brought her to faith. And he had, before Eunice, said it to Lois when he had brought her to faith. and so Lois comes to faith and Eunice and perhaps this is after Eunice is already married because Eunice gets married off to a Greek unbeliever and probably that's before she believes although believers do make make mistakes like that, costly mistakes, and yet here was a godly Christian grandma and her daughter a Christian single mom, not an actual single mom, but a single mom as far as Christianity goes, and the discipling of her son. And they trusted their Savior who loved them, and they trusted their Savior who not only had saved their souls, but deals with us in a covenantal way, and treats our children, even if just one of the parents is converted, he treats the children as if both of the parents were converted. And he says in 1 Corinthians 7 that the unbelieving husband or wife is sanctified by the other so that the children will be called holy. And every covenant child just one believing parent is as holy, as set apart to God, as if both parents were Christians. So great is the covenant faithfulness of God and then the of course also encourages in the context and you don't know whether God is going to save your spouse through you too. And so so here are God's covenantal dealings with this dear grandma and this dear mom without a Christian grandfather or father or husband in the home and God has kept his covenant promise. He's produced in their grandson and their son the faith that was first in them. And so when Paul thinks about Timothy and what God has been doing in Timothy's family and what God has been doing in his church and raising up for her those ministers whom he redeems throughout the ages and now Paul is inserted into that line that includes people like Joseph and Moses and Daniel. And Paul gets to be in there, and then he thinks about his son in the faith, Timothy, and Timothy gets to be in there. And what a great mercy it is. We should be amazed that God would call me, would call your father to join that line and to see that it's entirely the grace of God, isn't it? But how consistent and faithful Is God in his mercy that he keeps calling ministers and we should pray for him to raise up more of them That he would redeem Boys by grace like he redeemed Timothy whom he is particularly calling to the ministry of the gospel. I that He would sanctify them and work on them by His Spirit to give them this desire, not just to serve God and go through the motions, but to serve God with a pure conscience. So we'd be thankful to God for this great continuity of His mercy to send ministers of the gospel throughout history. And we'd be thankful to God for every time we see a covenant child being brought to faith and we say, yeah, he did set apart that child as holy by putting that child in a Christian household. And he has kept his covenant promises in bringing that child to faith. We give thanks. This convicts us, I think, because very often we don't remember one another much at all, let alone remember one another with thanksgiving. And then remember one another with prayer. And one of the things that is driving him to remember Timothy in prayer is the memory of the last time he saw Timothy. Because the last time he saw Timothy, Timothy's face was wet. Not with rain, not because he'd just had a shower or a bath, but last time he saw Timothy, Timothy's face was wet with tears. He says, greatly desiring to see you being mindful of your tears. And so he remembers how sad Timothy was that he wasn't going to get to see Paul for a while. And he knows that Timothy's love for Paul, especially now that Paul is in chains and Paul is getting close to dying, like he says in this letter, that this makes it even harder on Timothy. And some of the things he says in the letter show us that he knows that Timothy is suffering in the ministry. He's being attacked and he's having difficulty. And so Paul, this old apostle to the minister whom he has most mentored and to whom he is closest to, remembers his tears. And every time that flash of the memory of the tears on Timothy's face comes into his mind, he prays to God, oh Lord, comfort Timothy, oh Lord, strengthen him. And he's writing a letter by the inspiration, the carrying of the Holy Spirit that will comfort him and turn him back to Christ, give him confidence in the gospel, remind him that the scriptures have everything in them that he needs to be equipped for every good work. And so he prays for Timothy's joy, and he labors for Timothy's joy in the ministry, and he also can't wait to see Timothy. He's looking forward to seeing him and to replace that most recent image of the tear-stained, grieved face with the image of the son, as it were, to his father. Delighting to see him again, rejoicing to see him again. That we should pray for and work for and desire to be used to bring our brothers and sisters joy. especially the ones with whom the Lord has most intersected our life. Which right now, for all of you, especially means one another. That you'd be thankful to God for each of your brothers and sisters in this home. That you would remember one another in prayer. You'll find it much more difficult to be cross with one another in your reactions if you're constantly lifting up your hearts to God in prayer for one another's joy. And the way you help one another in biblical things will be much improved if in your heart you're really aiming at your brother's joy or your sister's joy when you do that helping. And so we can learn much here from what it looks like when the Spirit increases genuine love and recognition of what God is doing so that out of love for God and love for neighbor and especially now love for brother, We would be thankful to God for his work and then desiring to participate in that work, desiring with the similar desire of Jesus who came that his joy might be in us and who spoke that his joy might be in us and that we might have our joy fulfilled. Indeed, not only should we desire and pray and labor for our brother's joy, but we ourselves should delight to see one another. This can be a difficult thing, especially if we have that weakness of personality called introversion. Extroverted or introverted are just words that we use to recognize that in our finite and fallen state, each of us has strengths and weaknesses. And there are strengths that belong to each of them. But one of the weaknesses of introversion is we find it hard sometimes to consider it delightful as we anticipate seeing people. And yet the Bible teaches us that with believers, We ought to have such a view of God and His work in them and such a view of our participation in His work in their lives and their participation in His work in our lives that that will overrule our natural introversion. That doesn't mean it's not exhausting. After all, we're still finite. We still do the sleep for a third of your life to survive the other two-thirds thing, but we should learn to delight in seeing believers, to rejoice at the sight of their face, and the Lord conforming us To Christ, more and more we will. It's Christ who longs for the presence of his bride. It's Christ who says in the Song of Songs over and over again, come away with me. It's Christ who prays to his Father. I desire that those whom you have given me would be with me where I am, to see me. And as the desire of Christ and the delight of Christ in seeing those who are His is more produced in us, the more we will delight to see one another. Now this is something that, of course, Paul would have been way ahead of Timothy in. It's something we grow in. It's not something that gets fixed by hearing it once. But it is something that the Lord had seasoned and matured the old apostle in. And it's something that he uses his word as we worship him in reading and hearing and dependence upon his spirit who conforms us to Christ that he grows us in as well. So let's ask him to do that. Let's pray. Father, how far we have to go in loving you and being thankful to you and seeing the faithfulness of your work and your church, ministry of the gospel through history, your covenant faithfulness and families. Lord, we ask that our covenant theology would not just be a point on which we know ourselves to be closer to your word and how we think than others. but that we would truly think this way and in a way that affects how we think about and feel towards you and remember and pray for, rejoice over, give thanks to you. for what you are doing in the children from Christian homes. And we pray, Lord, that you would make our hearts full of thankfulness to you and that you would give us a desire to be used by you in your work in one another's lives and for one another's joy. We pray especially for What we were thinking about as far as how we relate to one another in the home, that your spirit would use this portion of your word and would work on our hearts towards one another, and that it would come out in the way we speak to and look at and interact with one another. And you pray, Lord, that you would make us delight to see one another. that we would be conformed to the mind and heart of Christ in those things as well. Thank you for doing this for Paul. Thank you for doing it for Timothy. Thank you for recording it in this letter, and thank you that you that have done it then are still doing it now, and believers and saints like we are, whom you have redeemed entirely by your grace. And so we give you thanks and we ask you for these things in Jesus' name. Amen.