Don’t Slack Off
Don’t Slack Off
2 Timothy 3:14-15
1. In What You Have Been Taught
But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned . . . (2 Timothy 3:14)
We learn very few things, because we learn that only to which we give our wits. Are we sticking to the things we have learned? We say we believe that God is love, but have we learned that He is? Have we assimilated it? We see truths, but we are not yet in the circumstances where we can learn them. Many things are taught, but we cannot learn them all at once. We say—“Oh yes, I would like to be that,” then there comes the “stick-at-iveness”—sixty seconds every minute, sixty minutes every hour. The only way in which we learn is by the terrific iteration of the commonplace.
Experience is never the ground of our confidence; experience is the opening of the door to a new life which must be continued in. Some of us are continually having doors opened, but we will not go through them. Don’t slack off, keep on with the thing which you have learned. We speak about testifying to the experience of sanctification; what we really testify to is not an experience of sanctification but to a revelation granted us by God of what sanctification is: the experience of sanctification is the rest of life from that moment.
2. In What You Have Tested
and hast been assured of . . . (v. 14)
Many of us believe, but we will not confess to what we believe, consequently we are assured of nothing. “I did ask God for the Holy Spirit, but I do not feel sure of anything.” Confess what you believe for, and instantly the assurance of that for which you believe will be made yours. We are so terribly afraid to venture on what God says. Confession is not for the sake of other people, but for our own sake. Confession means we have trusted God for this thing and we believe on the ground of His word that the work is done. We realise by confessing that we have no one saving God to stand by us. Have we ever taken the cross of confessing? When we believe with the heart, we have to confess with our mouth what we believe to those whose business it is to know. The reason some of us lack assurance is because we do not continue in what we have tested, something has made us slack off.
3. In Loyalty to Your Teachers
knowing of whom thou hast learned them . . . (v. 14)
God brings His own particular teachers into our lives, and we have to watch that we do not slack off in our loyalty to them. Loyalty to teachers is a very rare thing. The man or woman used by God to teach me is not necessarily the one used to teach you. We must not foist our teachers on everyone else. Are we loyal, to our teachers, or are we spiritual butterflies? Does every new-comer on the highway of spiritual life switch us off on to a new line? God very rarely teaches direct from His word until the way for that has been opened by His own order—“and He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers” (Ephesians 4:11). God makes His own teachers; we have to see that we do not slack off in our loyalty to them.
4. In the Scripture Truth
and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures . . .
It is not the thing on which we spend most time that moulds us, but the thing that exerts the greatest power.
Five minutes with God and His word is worth more than all the rest of the day. Do we come to the Bible to be spoken to by God, to be made “wise unto salvation,” or simply to hunt for texts on which to build addresses? There are people who vagabond through the Bible, taking sufficient only out of it for the making of sermons, they never let the word of God walk out of the Bible and talk to them. Beware of living from hand to mouth in spiritual matters; do not be a spiritual mendicant.
Beware of the novel things. Some of us spiritually are independent, impudent travellers—“Oh, I can find my way all right.” The thing to do is to keep on the steady track—“Honour thy father and thy mother.” “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy,” etc. God brings back what is old in order to test our loyalty. All the novel things slip away; the essential track remains.
5. In the Salvation Testimony
. . . which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
The Bible is not the word of God to us unless we come to it through what Jesus Christ says. The Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation, are all revelations of Jesus Christ. The context of the Bible is Our Lord himself, and until we are rightly related to Him, the Bible is no more to us than an ordinary book. We cannot know the Holy Scriptures by intellectual exercises. The key to our understanding of the Bible is not our intelligence, but our personal relationship to Jesus Christ (cf. John 5:39-40). The New Testament was not written in order to prove that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; but written to confirm the faith of those who believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. There are no problems in the New Testament. We take much for granted, but nothing is ever ours until we have bought it by pain; a thing is worth just what it costs. We seem to lose everything when we go through the suffering of experience, but bit by bit we get it back. The Bible treats us as human life does—roughly.
“He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned.” Do we allow ourselves to be arrested when we read the Holy Scriptures? The vital relationship of the Christian to the Bible is not that he worships the “letter,” but that the Holy Spirit makes the words of the Bible “spirit and life” to him. When we are born from above (rv mg) the Bible becomes to us a universe of revelation facts whereby we feed our knowledge of Jesus Christ.